Homesteading

“Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love." Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.” 

~Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food

Our little homestead is growing by leaps and bounds. Living in community we have the great gift of living among many farm animals; we care for them and in turn they provide for us. It has been our greatest dream to contribute to the provisions by having our own little team on our plot of land and this weekend, we began to see our dream to reality.

We welcomed six chicks into our family this weekend (along with the newcomers you'll meet below). Kiki adores them and has spent every waking moment tending to them, singing to them, holding them. For just three years old she has given us a glimpse into what amazing care she is capable of. Her tenderness, quiet, gentle devotion. It's almost like she goes to a meditative place while she is with these chicks.

We were also gifted this beautiful Lionhead bunny. While he won't necessarily produce anything akin to food or materials he has already produced a softening of heart, a smile within us all, a gentleness that we all needed after this long, long winter. His name is Little Lionheart.

This beautiful Black Sexlink is Beatrice. She is a wise old gal and happily and immediately made herself at home. She is gentle, sweet, and so far, has enjoyed begin carried about by various little hands. She also have us our first egg!

We have a Red Sexlink as well (her name is Ruby). It has been of utmost importance to her to figure out her new digs as she's feeling pretty broody. I found her nestled into the coop working on laying her first egg so I didn't want to disturb her with a photo op.

This is Max, our Rooster, and his lady love, Gwendolyn. She follows him everywhere. They are both still a bit nervous but have warmed up to us and have let us help them into the coop at night. Our coop is our old outdoor rabbit hutch, modified with nesting boxes and roosts to accommodate our brood. It will require a bit of assistance on our part to get them in and out of the coop, just until they're comfortable with the process on their own.

Our landscape is a beautiful one. The sheep add an element of olden days and when living off the land was how you survived. We're getting closer and closer to that place of self reliance. Our dream is not to live as if it were the 1800's but to embrace and accept our gifts and primal calling to be connected to  the land, to keep our children connected and focused on the sanctity of caring for and working the land, working with our hands, and allowing the realness of providing for ourselves to be at the forefront of how we build our home.

"The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” 
~ Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

  

Being a Waldorf inspired home we are fortunate to live where we do. The daily tasks of tending to the animals, preparing the garden for the season, integrating the childrens daily play and rhythms into the ebb and flow of the natural world around them is so beautiful and unique. 

"As child, one has the magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees." ~ Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth

For Little Hands :: Encouraging Spring

I'm trying to figure out how to work For Little Hands back into my weekly posts, I know consistancy is key and I'm not sure quite yet what the rhythm will look like. My thought this time around is to have it on Fridays as a way to kick of the weekend. I'll add more to it as the idea comes to fruition.

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We love the birds that come and visit our bird feeders; their sweet songs and round little bellies. It's a real joy to sit back and watch them and even when we don't, we know they're there and that brings a smile to our faces.

Here is an older post for you to enjoy(with wee hands in mind) about a simple way to interact with your neighborhood birds while  providing much needed nourishment.....at least where it's really wintry this time of year!

Look at my little Charlotte! She sure has grown! Oh my xoxo

Preparing......diapers!

Well, the count down is on. It's been a long few weeks of cleaning and the continued preparations for welcoming our new baby within the next 4-5 weeks. This pregnancy has seemingly flown by! Between big kids and all of their activities and being home with two littles, life has never a dull moment. Lately, I've been drifting back into memories of having my first born......napping when he napped, snuggling all day, quiet days and cozy nights, just us! There happen to be 6 years between Bella and Charlotte so I was able to experience that feeling again with her, napping when (or IF) she napped, super snuggles, less chaotic moments. Having more children certainly changes the way you are able to spend time with you newborn. Not in a bad way, just different. Fewer slow moments, packing baby more to accomplish tasks instead of letting things fall to the wayside and wrapping ourselves in bed for a day full of snuggles. The other children need to eat, have clean clothes, they need attention, too. It's an adjustment when you open your heart and mind even wider to welcome another blessed soul into your life, something I would never change.......right now, I'm just acknowledging the transistion and what is required to make it all come together seamlessly and with as little trauma as possible!

This week I spent the week researching ways to cut costs and help make life a little more easy. Diapers and babywearing have been at the top of the my list. I don't like disposable diapers.......I appreciate the convenience however after doing the math (I admit I'm a bit late to the party) and realizing how much money we've spent and literally thrown away in disposable diapers, I'm quite disappointed in us! For the past 5 years we've been between disposable diapers and gdiapers. I like them alot but there are some things I don't........like the bunching of the insert, the messing in the liner, and not being able to afford the covers and liners. It's expensive (for us). Seventh Generation diapers are sold at our local grocery, so, even though they were still disposable we felt better about the ingredients. The cost is quite high next to other mainstream diapers but we agreed it was worth the "investment". SO, after thinking long and hard about how to use the gdiaper covers that we owned already I was led to find Green Mountain Diapers. Between what they offer and what I was given a few years ago when KiKi was born (wool covers, some prefolds, and other random covers) I was able to compile a list of items that would take us into the realm of full time cloth diapering for our new baby and for KiKi. It has been a full week of alternative diapering for  KiKi this week. I went to an amazing consignment sale and scored on items that she could use now and baby will eventually grow into! Walking into the consignment sale I inquired about cloth diapers being there since I had no interest in scoping out the entirety of the 20,000 items in the sale. The lady at the door smiled and said "Oh, I don't think so.......". I politely smiled and felt the urge to peek anyway. I walked around the corner, found the potty training section and proceeded to discover and bounty of bumGenius covers and inserts and a bummis start up kit which came with 4 covers, 18 organic cotton prefolds, a wet bag, flushble and reusable liners; all for a huge discount! I saved over $200 by purchasing all that I did used.

KiKi in her bummis Super Whisper wrap with
an organic cotton prefold.

Whew! It's a lot of hard work trying to make a decision like this one. Why? Well, there are so many options (too many in my opinion) and trying to discover which ones are best for our family was the most difficult task. Having two in diapers maked it even more challenging in my mind. Finding or more over creating a system that works for both babes and both parents (simpicity at home and out) was the leading factors, aside from cost. The enviromental implications of what we've contributed thus far are staggering.......and it breaks my heart! I'm glad that I've reached whatever plateau I needed to finally find the confidence and discipline to make the switch. It feels SO AWESOME!!!!! There is such a sense of accomplishemnt!

Well......this is just a small piece of where we've been this week! I've got my list, made inquiries on Craigslist and Freecycle to find the pieces I still need to complete our stash at a discount and second hand. If any of you who visit my blog have any comments about what worked for you in the alternative diapering world I'd LOVE to hear them!!!

For my next post I will write about our adventures in babywearing :o)