I could spend this entire blog post complaining about the downsides of this time of year. It's often the month in which the homeschooling reality hits hard (things are not new, exciting, and "fun" anymore!) It's often in October that I start to feel pulled in so many directions (keeping up with housework, schooling, meals, laundry, garden, making time for myself and time for God, etc.) In October, the stress of the upcoming holidays seems to be looming...I blame the stupid catalogs that already have CHRISTMAS stuff in them! But to lift my spirits I think I'd rather write instead about the blessings and celebrations of our month so far.
A year ago this week our chickens were born and sent to us. How time flies! We are still enjoying them SOOO much!
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| Two Days Old Last October 17th! |
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| A wee one. |
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| These ladies do a lot of work for me---pest control, tilling the soil, and fertilizing! |
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| Not to mention the eggs have been beautiful and delicious! |
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| Prayerful chickens. I hope this isn't sacrilegious. :-) |
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| It's fun to watch them just hanging out. |
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| Even our friends like to hang out with them. Or chase them. |
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| The coop has a new tarp for winter. I still consider this coop the best purchase I ever made. |
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| If I had to pick another flock, and didn't want variety, I'd choose all Leghorns. They have been the best bug eaters, the best layers (egg quality and reliability), and although they are a little skittish, they freeze when they're scared, so they are relatively easy to manage. |
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| This is a current picture of the flock. Three white Leghorns, two Speckled Sussex, two Silver-Laced Wyandottes, and three Easter Eggers. |
We celebrated Meara's 7th birthday this month. No matter how old she gets, I will always think of her as my baby. She is the middle child, the girl who I fear will never have her needs met. She is my silly one, my baby-talker, my bug-catcher, my fruitty tuitty girl, my free-spirit. I love her so much, and yet don't show her nearly enough.
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| Birthday bonfire! |
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| Birthday party silliness! |
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| The morning of her birthday, we saw this beautiful patch of sun streaming through our trees. I always tell the girls that when I was little, I thought this meant that angels were sliding down the sun's rays to come to earth. Meara ran outside immediately, half-dressed as usual, to be there when the angels landed to greet her for her birthday. |
This is first time in almost four years that I don't have a fairly decent bounty out back in the garden beds. In the moments when I get depressed about it, I tell myself that this time of rest for the old beds, and the patience required to wait for all the new stuff to sprout are all part of the whole process. I'm just super happy that the new fall beds are finally in, and I couldn't have done it without serious help from my family and from God. Long story short, we had about four cubic yards of soil delivered. The next day we had ANOTHER four cubic yards of compost delivered. There was no way I was going to be able to get this dirt into the new boxes. As it was, I had a wobbly wheelbarrow wheel, and the ten loads we had already dumped into the beds (using the wheelbarrow) had barely made a dent in the dirt pile. I went to bed that night really dejected, and I said to God, "God, if you want me to do this, if you want me to grow more food and start sending food to the food bank, you're going to need to help me. Because I can't do this. I can't get all this dirt into these beds." And the next morning, He answered me. With a Bobcat. Ironically, our memory verse for the past couple weeks has been the whole "ask and you shall receive" business, so what a wonderfully concrete way to show the girls that God DOES hear us!
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| We woke up early to lay the newspaper down on the grass in the beds. |
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| The first pile of dirt arrived. |
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| The next day, the second pile of dirt arrived. |
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| But so did a Bobcat. |
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| And it filled all the beds. |
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| In less than an hour. |
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| I've decided to mark off the beds in square feet, not necessarily to do square-foot gardening, but to make my garden log easier to keep. For the first time this year, I'm keeping my layout charts TO SCALE, which makes a huge difference when deciding what I want to plant versus what I actually have room to plant. The divisions also made plant spacing much easier. |
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| The girls had a blast planting the garlic, shallots and onions. |
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| The garlic, shallot and onion bed will be untouched until Spring, when I'll take the leaves off and the stuff will pop through the soil. Estimated harvest will be July. |
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| The second bed is all planted too---carrots, turnips, kale, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, parsnips, chard, and lettuces. This bed is my hoop house / greenhouse bed this year, and it's a total experiment to see what will actually sprout before the too-cold temps stymie my efforts. Last winter we had success with carrots done in the hoop bed, so at least we know we'll get some carrots out of it, if nothing else. |
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| There in the center, are the four things I have available right now-chives, oregano, rosemary and sage! |
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| Winter rye and hairy vetch are planted in the old beds. These cover crops will be tilled under in the Spring, and then the beds will be covered with plastic to seal in the heat all summer. This solarizing of the soil, in theory, will "cook" off any of the bad bacterial build up I had this year (fusarium wilt being the biggest offender). These two beds will be ready to plant next fall along with all the other beds. |
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| Ken built me this new compost setup. It's not quite finished, but I'm super happy to be moving to a more sturdy arrangement. And I'm really impressed with how handy he has become! |
It's really easy for me to lose perspective this time of year...to get tired and burned out and wonder a million times a day if this gig is worth it. But when I take a moment to reflect on the ways that God has truly blessed me, it doesn't make all the difficulties go away, but it does give me the "daily bread" I need to keep going...and sometimes even to smile while doing it.
