My Garden Grows

The bees stung me twice today. I cried both times. The sting itself is such a small pain, but as the stinger remains in, the burn grows and grows. A baking soda and water paste helps draw the heat, but as the swelling begins, the discomfort grows. And I know now that the swelling will continue for three days, so I think about fat and ugly knees that can hardly bend to get into the house, and I wonder if these still-ravenous bees are worth it.

They did not sting in anger. One was on the cloth I used as a pot holder as I brought them food; I absent-mindedly set it on my leg as I bent to pick up the empty pot, then stared, stupidly, at the defensive bee, stinger still in my knee. The next time I brought them food, I started to walk away, and a bee must have been in the hem of my shorts, and felt threatened.

Options? Get a haz-mat suit and get dressed and undressed the multiple times a day I need to check on them. Maybe even just have jeans at the ready, or maybe waterproof pants to pull on over shorts.

Eight stings so far does seem a bit unkind, but I’m trying to remember that the bees act on instinct, not purposeful malice.

Little things like that can plunge my spirits so quickly. Phil, male, stays on an even keel emotionally. I envy that at times.

As Phil and I continue to recover from the planting marathon, we find so many piddly things to do, but nothing seems terribly important. Phil continues to look at fencing options. We were fairly set on a mix of cattle panels and electric, but we do worry about the boys and their safety, if we run electric near their play areas. It’s hard to decide what is best.

Even something as simple as corner posts give me fits. I hate the idea of pressured treated lumber; I hate that it contains poisons and that it’s bad for the environment. But to spend, perhaps, twice as much on black locust or cedar or some other tough wood that doesn’t rot—we don’t have infinite money. It’s hard to know where the trade off is. Hard enough it brings tears to my eyes. What is the right thing to do?

Bits of my garden grow by the day. I harvested two softneck garlic heads today. I saved one and we ate one. I think it was a mild Inchelium Red, with red paper around each bulb. I also pulled most of the potato onions, and will let them cure.

I have also been on a seed harvesting journey these last few days. I left some of the peas to grow on the vine, and have saved them for next year. I didn’t really harvest much of anything to eat, which was a bummer, but I figure I didn’t lose much except my time, as long as I get back about the same number of seeds I planted. And the few I get are perfectly suited to my environment.

I have a bowl of kale seed, and am acquiring a bowl of spinach seed. I am thrilled about the former, and not so happy about the latter. Why gather it, if I don’t much like spinach? It feels too wasteful not to.

My herb seeds did not sprout, so I overseeded that bed with pumpkin and butternut squash seeds.

The tomato and pepper seeds I planted last weekend continue to grow fairly well. They had been outside, but chickens kept jumping up and pecking the baby seedlings, so I brought them inside and added them to my limited RV counter space. They aren’t getting much sun, but it is warm in there, and they will, at least, live until they are outside, not pecked to death.

I have one cheery nasturtium growing bravely near the electric box; I had planted many, but at least one survived the late frosts and the poor soil. It makes me smile, with its happy orange face.

We watched a movie last night about a man fighting to provide raw milk in Canada. This morning, Phil watched a brief movie about raw milk dairy.

Yet another thing we know nothing about, but need to figure out soon. Build a milking parlor, buy more equipment, hope it works for us.

"Dust of Snow"

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost’s poem came to mind several times today, as I had several little joys that made disappointments not sting quite so much.

I had headed into Charlottesville for a workshop on fall and winter gardening. I want to grow vast quantities of cabbage and make vast quantities of sauerkraut.

But though the email reminder and the website advertised the start as 7pm, the time should have said 5:30-7, and I missed it entirely. That part of the day I rued.

My friend Johanna, on her way to join me, suggested we walk The Mall (a walking mall designed by the same man who designed Pearl Street in Boulder, so we feel right at home). We stopped at a coffee shop and sipped drinks outside, enjoying the unexpected freedom of no immediate responsibilities. That was my “dust of snow.”

On the way home, I bought out the grocery store of their meager supply of cane sugar (again). I did a quick calculation, and it is just possible that it will be sufficient until the next time we’re near a grocery store. Rue and thankfulness, mixed.

Phil attended his first men’s meeting with our church. He came away so encouraged by the discernment and thoughtfulness that attends every meeting and interaction he’s had. We feel quite blessed.

Altogether Blessed

Abraham volunteered to pray at dinner. “Lord God … bless this food. … Bless this farm. … Amen.” His sweet sincerity makes me think that is the most blessed this farm has ever been.

This was as precious as something Isaiah said a week ago (which I may have already written about; I think about it enough, I don’t remember). We were talking about the verse in Proverbs that says, “May I have neither too much nor too little, lest I either forget God in my pride, or steal in order to live.” And Isaiah said, “Just like us! We have neither too much nor too little.”

I looked around our 224 square foot construction trailer, complete with roaches and 88 degree weather, but also containing love and the provision of the Lord.

“Isaiah, you’re exactly right. Just like us.”

Phil spent some time in continuing education, as he read more about grazing management. There is so much to learn, and so much of it has to come on the fly.

A few seeds, after four days in the soil, are poking up. New life! New promise!

Phil finished the new chicken pen, complete with roosts and nesting boxes. He seeded one of the boxes with eggs, because I think the birds are confused by such luxury. What?! A dedicated place to lay eggs?! Amazing.

Visitors

Over the weekend, one of the things I realized was that I'm feeling a bit isolated. Who will come to visit us, as my faithful friend Tamara did weekly in Colorado, when we live so far removed from the rest of the world?

Ha! The Lord sent us not one, not two, not three, but FOUR visitors today. Jenny had come once before, back in April, and this time she brought one of our pastors, Bill. She was impressed with how much more we had accomplished.

Johanna Bush also stopped by, on the spur of the moment, and ended up taking Isaiah with her for the day. Then she and her daughter Serena came for dinner; they brought delicious Indian food, and I made tacos with our pork, and it was a great meal. It was great to have company!

It was a great reminder to me that the Lord cares even about the little things in my life, like making sure that I have friends.

Phil has been heading to bed a bit earlier, and rising really early (for him): up and working at 5:45am. This afternoon he ordered the sawmill, which won't arrive for about a month. (!) He also called Butch with a question, which was providential timing: Butch needed a strong man to assist him with a stuck machine, so Phil headed over.

He started burning some paper trash this morning, trying to get our place looking a bit more guest-worthy. When he went to help a friend with a construction project, he left me with the request that I check on the smoldering barrel periodically.

I walked out at one point to find flames shooting out of the barrel, and some paper trash burning, falling, out onto the surrounding terrain.

This freaked me out, but I managed to douse the ground with water, and the disaster was averted. Phew!

Death continues to stalk us, but the Lord's protection remains.

Baby Bird and Dehydration Stopper

Phil found a tiny bird hopping between our trailers on Saturday morning. We wondered at first if it was a guinea keet, hiding until hatching, but as we observed it more, it had amazingly long feather for its extremely tiny size, and the bright-red inner mouth that I remember means "drop food here, Mom!" It refused to eat the chick food, so I'm pretty certain it was a wild bird. Isaiah carried it in his shirt pocket for a while, then we put it in a bush and hope it found its mother again, though I realize the outcome isn't terribly hopeful.

In this case, it's better not to know.

The bees continue to eat heavily. I put down a pot of sugar syrup at one point, and left it. Because I neglected to put sticks in, when I returned there were hundreds of dead bees in my pot. I was so upset!

But, in a startling turn of mind for me, I preached to myself, rather than sink into sorrow. "You've never kept bees before. If they all die, they all die. It's not the end of the world. Now you know that they do need some ways to get into the sugar syrup, and you'll do better in the future. Buck up, little camper!" It felt like good growth for me.

My sourdough starter turned moldy. Bummer. I guess I'll go back to the standard yeast bread, though I'd much prefer to do sourdough. I'll have to figure out a better method one of these days, I guess.

Sunday morning, Abraham woke up and vomited. Then Isaiah vomited. This time, though, I figured that they had (voluntarily) skipped dinner, and probably sweated much of the night in our trailer, that was 88 degrees (with high humidity) when they went in to go to bed. Dehydration!

I tried an anti-dehydration drink: 4 cups water, 1/2 teaspoon each salt and baking soda, 3 Tablespoons sugar. I added vanilla to make it taste a little better (a bit like a cream soda). The boys drank it very reluctantly, but by the time we needed to go to church they were happily jumping around.

Phil was relieved. We hadn't left the farm since the previous Sunday and he figured we all needed a little time off the farm.

Amy's Guide to Getting Pregnant

(No snarky comments on the title, please. I realize it sounds rather salacious, but it was better than all the alternatives I typed up, and the topic isn't bawdy in the least.)

I have no experience personally with infertility, though I have friends and family that have. I realize that there are many reasons why infertility happens (one woman I knew was born without a uterus; another had a uterus tipped just enough that the sperm couldn't reach it—she simply had to flip onto her stomach after the marital act, and was pregnant within a month). So I hope this post does not come across as insensitive or cruel to the very real, deep hurt that accompanies infertility.

That said, were I to have problems getting pregnant, here are the steps I would take, to give myself the best chance possible.

First step: stop all hormonal birth control (aka "the Pill" and its ilk). Because the Pill has extremely high levels of hormones, compared to a normal body, do not be surprised if it takes your body two years to get pregnant. It takes a while to regulate. Also, actively try not to get pregnant the first six months you're off the Pill; the residual hormones can harm the baby. (I've always wondered if that's why I miscarried after getting pregnant a few months after stopping.)

Next: cut out the "big three" really obvious bad foods. Trans fats, the manmade fats found in most fried foods, margarine, and other spreads, have no place in the diet at all. I have read even one exposure can significantly reduce the chance of conception that month. Instead, eat the healthy whole fats: butter, extra virgin olive oil, good quality coconut oil.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the second. This almost eliminates soda and other processed foods. No one knows how HFCS is made: its an industry secret. It's also a health nightmare. Check your labels, too: standard ketchup contains this, as do many salad dressings. You can find legitimate substitutions, though—no need to deprive yourself entirely.

Avoid all artificial colors and flavors. If it doesn't look like a natural color, avoid it. The strange chemicals industry uses to make food taste and smell more appetizing aren't worth the health problems.

To sum up: rid the diet of really awful industrial chemicals. "Shop the store perimeter," or, better yet, buy from local farms.

What to do: Add in high quality cod liver oil (high in vitamin A, which traditional cultures recognize as important for pregnancy—those cultures consume ten times the amount of vitamin A that we do; also high in vitamin D).

If you can access raw milk, drink raw milk, especially if you can find a grass-fed dairy. It'll be a bit more per gallon than grocery milk because grass-fed cows, and all the raw dairies I've heard of, do not feed hormone supplements to their cattle (the infamous rBGH, or recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone). No one should be drinking the rBGH milk—it's led to a generation of daughters with precocious puberty (I heard in a lecture recently that 50% of American girls menstruate at age ten). It's not good to add hormones to the body, when the body produces hormones in parts per trillion, an incredibly small amount.

Anyway, the rBGH cows do produce twice the milk that a non-treated cow produces, but the high-production cows also suffer many illnesses and shorter lifespans.

For me, it's worth it to pay a little extra for my milk and get an unadulterated product that is good for the cows and good for me.

And that's not touching the disaster of milk pasteurization, but that's another topic. Drink raw milk if you can find it. But back to the topic at hand....

I would check my general health. I really like Julia Ross's The Diet Cure, though the numerous supplements she recommends can get a bit pricey. Great results, though.

I would also do my best to make sure I was in hormonal balance. Do you ovulate regularly, and experience a menstrual cycle without cramps or discomfort? That's how it should be. The best resource I know for hormonal issues is Dr. Sherrill Sellman's book What Women Must Know to Protect Their Daughters from Breast Cancer. (You can also purchase this for only a few dollars, used, on Amazon. If I wanted information tailored to me, specifically, I might even pay for a phone consultation with her, which seems very reasonably priced.) Really, this is just an excellent book overall.

I would also want to make sure I know when I ovulate each month, to give myself the best possible chance of conception. You track your mucus and track your temperature on waking, and that should give you an accurate picture of when you are the most fertile. I learned this in the Couple to Couple League's class (through the Catholic church), but I have heard good things about Toni Weschler's book Taking Charge of Your Fertility.

I hope this is helpful, and if you are struggling with infertility, I am also happy to pray for you, that the Lord would bless your womb.

A Little Progress All the Time

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub, and who do you think they be?
Jadon, Isaiah, and Jonadab all play happily!

By early afternoon, we were all puddles of sweat. I don't remember sweat ever dripping off my nose, but it did today. I used to read missionary biographies about people in Cambodia or Thailand or India, and wonder how they dealt with such extreme temperatures. I think I realized today that they just do what they have to do. I can't change the weather, so I endure it.

It's a good indication that I have more margin in my life now: I decided it's time to potty train Joe. That requires many pointless trips to the motor home bathroom. He refuses to use the rough box in our construction trailer; it hurts his legs, I think. He didn't have a single success today, but I let him run around naked outside, so he didn't have many accidents-to-clean-up, either. He's asleep in a cloth diaper; we'll see if he's a bedwetter tomorrow morning. (None of my sons so far have been.)

I've also started back in with homeschooling. During the tree planting, we took our "summer vacation" early; there was no time for anything else. It's quite fun to read about Peter the Great and George Washington.

Phil dismantled the chicken coop. We're hoping to get neighbor Butch here to scrape the winter paddock, and make a large compost pile with all the manure. Before he can scrape, though, we need the area cleared. The chicken coop, six inches deep in dung (mostly on the outside), wasn't moving anywhere, so Phil took it apart and designed a new one. Joe delighted in bringing Phil screws, one at a time. Such a helpful guy. For its construction, he started to use the logs along our driveway. Good thing, since I think they're getting termite damage.

What else? I dug up and replanted one of my decorative crab apples (it's in its new home, below). I had put it right in front of the electrical box, and I suspect it was getting hit with too much stray voltage. Another crabapple, mere feet away, thrives (see it in the background).

I think I realized why the bees are so ravenous. Worker bees usually die off after about six weeks in the summer, literally working themselves to death. I hived them both six weeks ago; one hive, certainly, hasn't had a queen laying eggs for more than a week. I suspect they are trying to conserve energy, trying to give the queen and the brood as good a chance of survival as they can.

We ate a delicious watermelon for lunch, and I overcame my antipathy for planting, and stuck some watermelon seeds in the ground. I didn't turn over the soil or do anything fancy; I figure they might sprout despite imperfect growing conditions; might as well give them that chance. They certainly won't sprout if they're not in the ground!

I also finally got some tomato seeds into egg carton "planters" (punch a hole in the bottom, fill with soggy potting soil or compost, and plant). I was vastly encouraged to see the corn, okra, and lima beans that I planted last Saturday poking up well above the soil already. Great! I planted more limas randomly on the hillside wherever the spelt didn't take well. And a few zucchini seeds, so the boys can indulge in zucchini bread.

I also planted tromboncino summer squash along the fence. It's supposed to climb and provide both decoration and delicious squash. Bring it on!