An Update

There have been so many things I have wanted to share on this blog, but I wasn't sure how to come back to it, but I guess now is as good a time as any.

First, let me address some things that have been left unfinished. Last time I was here I was working on a series of posts on rhythm. I had to take a break from them for a while, so they are still not completely finished. However, once they are finished I will not be posting them on this site, but don't fret! I have something even better planned for them! They are going to be offered as a free e-course!

Which brings me to my next topic. Although, I have been absent from this blog, I have actually been working on other projects in the meantime. I am currently putting together a website on urban agriculture. I have taken a lot of tutorials and other information on this blog and put it into website format so that it will be easier to access. I am also putting some of it into e-course format including the rhythm course mentioned above and I'm also finishing up an urban agriculture quick start guide.  The website is still very much a work in progress, but if you'd like to check it out, it is here:

Urban Agriculture Info

Now, looking forward, I will be using this blog as a more personal family chronicle of what we are doing around here, while any type of informative posts will be put on the website. I hope you will stick around as the website comes together. I have great things planned for it and for this blog as well! 

Seed Saving

As you're thinking about what kinds of goodies to preserve for the winter, don't forget that you can save your seeds as well so you can cut down on your seed purchasing costs next planting season. There are a few different ways that plants produce seeds so saving seeds can be different for each plant, but there is nothing difficult about saving seeds once you know what you're looking for.

Squash, Melons & Peas

Some plants make it super easy to know how to save their seed. Cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini, peas and most squashes are pretty straight forward when it comes to seed saving. All you have to do is open them up scoop out the seeds, wash them off and dry them out on a paper plate. The picture above shows the peas separated from their pods.

Tomatoes

Others are a bit trickier. Tomatoes come to mind. In order to save tomato seeds you will need to use the following method. Scoop your seeds out and place them in a mason jar with enough water to cover them up well. Place a coffee filter over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band. You will need to leave this set to ferment over a few days. This process allows the mucousy covering around the seed to rot away so there is nothing to impede the growth of the seed the following year.

After the jar has set out for a few days you will need to dump the contents into a fine mesh strainer and rinse your seeds to remove all of the pulpy material. Once the seeds are well cleaned place them on a coffee filter on a paper plate to let them dry out before you store them for the winter.

Lettuce & Cole Crops

The last group of seeds that I want to talk to you about was the most daunting for me in the beginning. They include lettuces and cole crops. Don't make the mistake I did of letting these intimidate you! They are super easy to collect, although, you have to be willing to allow for the space and time to let them go to seed.

Most lettuces, if allowed to bolt will produce flowers which when allowed to dry will create small seed heads that can be collected and the seeds freed by lightly rolling them between your fingers over a piece of paper. The seeds will drop onto the paper and you can separate them from the rest of the flower to store over the winter. This year I got a bit lazy and instead of pulling things out of the raised beds when the spring season was over I left them in the beds, let them go to seed and put the seeds right back in the ground for the fall season. 

Cole crops are even easier! When they are left to go to seed they will produce seed pods that can be simply plucked from the plant, cracked open and the seeds inside can be collected and saved. The picture below are the seeds pods from our Chinese Cabbage plant. All cole crops will have similar looking pods.

Here are a few tips to remember when starting your personal seed banks.

• Make sure the seeds you save are heirloom seeds so that you can be sure you will be getting the same plants next year.
• Label everything! Including the plates, coffee filters and jars you are using to dry your seeds out. Include the type of vegetable, name, year and if you know where it came from originally include that too.
• There are many templates out there for seed packets so print some off or create your own. Use your imagination to decorate them and include the kids!
• Talk to your neighbors and friends and let them know what kind of seeds you have and see what seeds they have that they might be willing to trade so that you can add some variety to your garden next year.
• If possible space different varieties of the same type of vegetable as far apart as possible in order to avoid cross pollination which can create plants that might not be identical to their parent plants.
• Always gather the best looking seeds from the best vegetables from your crops in order to ensure that you are propagating strong healthy new plants.

I Need Your Help!

If you've followed this blog you have heard me talk about putting together K-8 curriculum packs for knitting and handwork lessons. I am finally trying to get this project off the ground, but I need your help! I am looking for families who would be willing to test them out for me before I send them to the e-publisher.

I am currently working on getting my knitting lesson plans off the ground and am looking for one or two families to test each of the levels K-8. The knitting classes consists of 8 one hour classes to complete at a rate of one per week. I will email you with all the course documents and each week I would need you to send me an update of a few lines (maybe even pictures?) about what is working and what is not. At the end of the course, with your permission it would be great if you could send me a testimonial that would be suitable for publication on the sale website.

If you are interested please let me know! You can contact me using the Contact Me button on the right side of the screen. 

Making Pesto

As mentioned in my previous post, we are now in the preserving season so I thought I would share one of my favorite preserving projects with you. Making pesto!

I only have 4 basil plants this year, but they are doing remarkably well and I think that I should be able to get at least a couple more batches of pesto out of them before the winter.

Pesto is incredibly simple to make. All you need is some basil, parmesan cheese, garlic, olive oil and pine nuts. Although, in my opinion, the pine nuts are optional and I often omit them when I'm making pesto. I'm sure others would disagree, but they are expensive and are not something I keep around the house so it's easier for me to just leave them out.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures from my pesto making journey.

The first and most laborious part of the whole process is removing the basil leaves from the stems.

I then cut up several cloves of garlic and put them in the bottom of my blender, add the basil on top, sprinkle the parm on top of the basil and start the blender. Once the leaves are mostly chopped up I begin to add the olive oil until I achieve the desired consistency. I don't follow a recipe, but instead add ingredients as I go to suit my own tastes.

Once I've reached a good taste and consistency I spoon heaps of pesto into these awesome cube trays that I purchased when Will was a baby so I could make and freeze homemade baby food.

Once the cubes are completely frozen I take the cubes out of the tray and put them in a freezer bag marked with the date and contents.

I can usually make enough to last me until the next summer. And preparation is super easy, just take a cube out of the fridge and mix into hot noodles or spaghetti squash and you're set for dinner. Try it out! I promise you'll like it!

Seasonal Rhythm

As promised, here is the first installment of my Finding Our Rhythm series. I have to admit I went for the easiest part of the pyramid first and decided to tackle the rhythm of the seasons. After reviewing the basic comings and goings of our family I've divided our seasons up into five distinctive periods. You will notice that they are based loosely around the old Celtic holidays. Our family generally observes these holidays with some kind of celebration so I figure these celebrations can be an excellent segue into the next season. Each season we will observe a home theme of either Preserving, Handwork, Resting, Planting, Growing.    

Fall - Lammas to Halloween
There are traditionally three fall harvest  Lammas, August 1st to Halloween. The fall season in our house will be dedicated preserving the bounty that we grew over the summer and include things such as canning, freezing, seed saving, medicine making and so on. 

Winter -All Saints Day to Candlemas
Halloween is traditionally considered to be the last of the harvest festivals, so after the Halloween holiday we will turn our focus inward to what we can do while we are inside our home for the winter. Instead of trying to tackle knitting, felting, toy making and holiday gifts throughout the year, and spreading ourselves thin in the process, we will use this time to focus solely on creating a period of contraction and inward focus.

Break -Candlemas to End of February
At this point the holidays are past, but it's not quite time for planting and growing. We will use this time as a period of rest and renewal. We will not focus on growing, planting, handwork or preserving. Instead we will focus on relaxing. Perhaps this will be a good time to take a vacation to a warmer climate or even just a trip to a state park inn or perhaps just a day spa. Whatever we do it will be with the intent of saving up our energy for the coming period of work and expansion. 

Spring - March 1st to Midsummer
From now until midsummer we will focus on planting our gardens for the spring and summer. With planting season we will begin a period of outward expansion that will last until the harvest season.We will focus on preparing our garden beds and planting our seeds. Plotting out new beds and adding to our old beds.

Summer - Midsummer to August
This is the peak of the year and the growing season when our plants and our bodies are at their maximum strength. Life is easy and food is abundant. We will devote this part of the year to nurturing our plants, pulling up the weeds and enjoying the fruits of our planting season labor with delicious seasonal recipes.

This will affect this blog in that I will be creating biweekly tutorials on topics specific to the current season. I will be creating buttons on the side bar that will link to an archive for each season so that you and I can look back and get some ideas on ways to mark the passing of the seasons and how to keep a seasonal rhythm within your own home.

The next topic I will be covering is the rhythm of life from birth to death. I will be reserving the other two points on the pyramid, weekly and daily rhythm, for a much later date as we are currently looking at making some life altering changes that will significantly affect our daily and weekly rhythm. These changes, although they will be difficult in the short term, will hopefully pay off greatly for our family's future. I'm excited and scared and sad and happy about these changes and I will hopefully share them with you joyfully when the time comes. In the meantime, turn your focus inward and enjoy this harvest season and take the time to spend with your loved ones while bedding down for winter.

Finding Our Rhythm

Tomorrow is the first day of the harvest holidays and I think it's a great time to implement a few changes around here. If you read my previous post you will know that we reached a point a couple weeks ago where we ran out of steam. At the time I wasn't sure what we were going to do to get things under control, but slowly and surely the answers are starting to come into focus.

The first thing that has become quite apparent to me is that our family really needs to get into some kind of rhythm that will help us streamline our lives and focus on the things and people we love. I've read over and over how important rhythm is in family life and I guess it took a meltdown for it to sink in.

After examining our lives and doing a bit of research I was able to break our family rhythms down into four sections: 

Life Rhythm
The cycle from birth to death. I don't really have a handle yet on how to pin this down. By observing our birthdays and life milestones? I'm open to suggestions.

Seasonal Rhythm
The cycle of the season of the year. Our family has been okay about being observant of the seasons, but I think we can do better. I'm also planning on dedicating each season to a specific task such as preserving, handwork, gardening and so on. That way we are able to focus on one seasonal task at a time instead of trying to do all the things all the time.

Weekly Rhythm

As the old poem goes,  


Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

We will obviously have to modify this somewhat to fit with our modern life, but the basic idea will be the same. Although, I have to admit that I think this will be the hardest for us to keep up with. I can micromanage the day to day well enough. The seasonal comes naturally. This mid-range rhythm is going to be a bit tougher I think.

Daily Rhythm
We've already been working on this one. I have daily lists posted on our tack board of the things that we have to do in the evening when we come home. I'm going to revise it a bit and add one for the morning as well.

In the next few days I will be dedicating an individual post to each of these types of rhythm with a plan for how our family will keep up with each.

Update

It's been nearly a month since I've written anything. The first week I was absent I was working on another project that I'm trying to get off the ground. The second week I was gone was supposed to have been spent relaxing, but instead it was spent putting out those little fires that life likes to throw at you when you're least prepared. The third week was the breaking point.

After running out of steam Jacob had to go to the hospital and was treated for exhaustion, dehydration, vitamin deficiency and an upper respiratory infection. No great surprise since he works three jobs and takes care of the yard and the animals and helps out with the garden and of course parenting. Thankfully, we have some wonderful friends and family who came to our rescue to help out. However, after all this, one thing has become apparent. We cannot continue to do all the things we do. I'm not exactly entirely sure what we are going to give up yet, but some things are going to have to go. It's going to be a process to see what we can keep and what we have to give up.

I will continue posting here, but perhaps not as frequently. We simply have to get the basics under control before we can put our energy wholeheartedly into any of our projects. Stay tuned folks. I'm not abandoning this blog just yet, but it may be a bit quieter around here for a while.