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I have a few more minutes to write another blog entry, and I thought I'd share a little of the handsewing book I'm currently working on - which seams to take the dragons portion of my time. The printer has it slated for a March print date, so we are hoping to have them in stock by April. This book has been a long time in the making - nearing 3 years!
It started from a simple little idea (like my hope chest book did) of sharing with others the fun and enjoyment found in handsewing. I started a local handsewing class for homeschooled girls and created the ten lessons in the book by teaching them to my students.
We all had such fun! Most of the girls had never held a needle before, so it was a challenge for me to find a way to begin - and to advance. It had to be enough to keep their attention while teaching them basics at the same time. Several of the mothers also joined the class and learned to sew sitting next to their daughters.
The first lesson consisted of 12 basic handsewing stitches every lady should know. Then we progressed to lesson two where we learned 17 basic embroidery stitches. Then we learned gingham embroidery, basic crochet, basic quilting and onward through to lesson ten.
Each lesson taught on the foundation of the previous lesson, and each lesson had a sweet project to complete - either for use now in the home, or to be stored in the hope chest for later use.
So now the book is nearly finished. The editor is going through it page by page. The illustrator is creating a beautiful cover illustration, and the printer is waiting for the final draft. The book will be a hardcover edition, 8.5 x 11inches.
As part of the final formatting, I have been searching through over a hundred old sewing magazines dating back to the 1800's. I found one sweet little poem that I plan to put into the book, but thought I'd share on my blog as well.
OLD FASHIONED THINGS by Martha N Carter
Old fashioned things, I love them still; A flower-pot on a window sill; A slant of sunshine on the floor, And morning glories round the door.
Soft curtains swaying in the air; A slumbrous sleepy-hollow chair (rocking chair); A braided rug, a cat asleep, A shaded porch where roses creep.
Night's soundless silence, rifted through With vapory scent of new turned soil; The homely tiredness of toil.
A nook, at eve, where Someone sits And idlly reads, or talks, or knits; A neighbor's hand; the world's good-will; Old fashioned things - I love them still.
The illustration that goes with this poem is so sweet too. An open window with the breeze blowing the curtains out, a little potted plant on the windowsill. A rocking chair and a braided rug with a sleeping cat on it. Very sweet :)
Well, I have some sewing to do. Then I'll pick up my 13 year old daughter from her college class (she's enrolled in two now, the college orchestra and also Piano 3). Then it's off to bed for tonight! |
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One interesting thing we found when we first looked at this house, prior to purchasing it, was a scraggly little overgrown grape bush stuck in the middle of the back lawn off to the side. WHY I thought, would anyone plant a grape bush is such a strange place! Why not up against the wall, or next to the porch where there is redwood lattice, or simply in a more suitably placed location? My children have to run around this bush to play and it's not easy to mow the grass beneath it!
Over the summer we watched as it first exploded into green leaf, and then began to produce such an enormous amount of grape clusters I honestly didn't think it could bring to fruition what it had started - but to my astonishment it had so many grape clusters on that scraggly little bush our whole family couldn't eat them all and we were giving them away for people at church.
Huge, heavy clusters - the tops mounded over oodles of grapes until the cluster ended in a point. Beautiful Thompson Seedless grapes, so sweet from ripening in the sun it was like eating candy instead of fruit! The only drawback were the spiders living inside the clusters that kept little fingers from eating them right off the branch - but that is probably God's way of keeping who knows what out of my children's mouths since the grapes hadn't been washed first :) (And soaking the clusters in cold water in the sink took care of the spiders.)
Well, this year that scraggly grape bush is going to get pruned into a semi-grapelike appearance :) I know from experience, that once a grape bush takes root somewhere, they are nearly impossible to get rid of. And this one has such extraordinary fruit on it I really don't want to get rid of it, so stay it shall.
We (my husband and I) are trying to come up with a way to build a small redwood grape arbor with a seat for the children to sit on, for this little plant to grow up and over on - and to place another grape busy on the opposite side. Logistically we're a little stumped on how to place the arbor to best advantage, but getting closer to the answer!
I am also on the lookout now for my apricot tree, a dwarf tree for sure so we don't have fruit spilling into our neighbor's yards, and of a size I can prune myself. I am also looking for an assortment of grape bushes. I have found some at Walmart, three in a box, but they are not the type I would like. Concord grape for jelly making is what I'm after, and Thompson Seedless for fresh eating. This weekend I'll expand my search to the surrounding stores and see what I come up with!
I found asparagus roots and strawberry roots for sale as well, and though I long to purchase them, I don't have an area ready yet and that is crucial for planting. So I may have to wait until next year or knuckle down and plant in planter boxes :) Have you ever seen strawberry plants hanging from plant hangers on someone's porch? Those ripe red berries at eye level for the picking? And very few bugs to contend with over your bountiful harvest :) So that may be what I do this year instead, and then next year transfer them to the strawberry beds we will work on over the summer months.
Because my fingers are itching to plant, I have bought several more houseplants and our kitchen and dining room are filled with greenery. I never could get plants to grow at our old house, too much sunlight for them! Here the whole front of the house is facing south with very few windows, and the back is facing north and nothing but huge sliding glass doors along the whole back. The indirect light is making these houseplants grow very well!
The lighting will be perfect for my inside salad garden too! I have placed an order for some heirloom seeds and I'm looking for a nice round saucer type planting container for my garden bed. It must be close to 24 inches across and about 8-12 inches deep. Having an indoor salad garden is fun, beautiful and you have a salad available at your fingertips whenever you like!
What seeds to use? I like an assortme of radishes (did you know there are dozens of varities, shapes and sizes?), green onion, an assortment of lettuce, celeric (a leaf form of celery, no stalks), baby carrots, spinach, parsley, cilantro, etc. Anything that does not "bloom" and need a polinizer to start the growth of fruit or veggie.
When planting your seeds, don't be tempted to overplant - use caution as those seeds grow into full mature sized plants! If you plant a dozen lettuce seeds, they will not have enough room to grow properly let alone the other plants you have planted. So use 2-5 seeds when you start. You can always pull out a few little seedlings if they all take root. Plant with height in mind too, the taller plants to one side or in the middle - depending on how you want to arrange it. And if you find some of your plants are getting a little too leafy, pluck off some leaves. Radishes can tend to get very leafy so trim off a few to make room.
I like to have at least 3 varities and colors of radishes and lettuce. Choose your lettuce varieties carefully though! You will have it for months and months. With lettuce, you do not need to pull the whole plant from the ground!!! Simply break off the outer leaves of any lettuce plant near the soil level, or cut them off with a pair of scissors. The lettuce plant will continue to produce new lettuce leaves - from the INSIDE OUT! This works for nearly any lettuce plant except the iceberg lettuce which comes with a head. In this way, you have a continual abundance of lettuce at your fingertips - give the plant a few days between picking and it will replenish itself quickly. You won't have to wait for new seed to grow into a plant either, so you truly do have a supply at hand.
Radishes tend to take about 25-30 days to mature enough to eat - from seed to harvest. They grow incredibly fast too. Plant about 30 seeds total in your little garden area where they are easily reached, because as you pluck them out to use, you will be dropping a new seed in it's place and have a revolving radish supply. For most salads you only need a few radishes, but there may be times when you're low on radishes if you use them quite a bit. Some varities mature in as early as 20 days - so see what appeals to you.
The same for carrots, only they can take quite a bit longer to mature. I don't normally grow mine in the inside salad garden, but you can for fun if you like. They can take up to 4 months to produce a large enough carrot to use.
Spinach does very well too, though you can only pick off the leaves for a few weeks before the plant will go to seed. So once you start to harvest from your spinach plant, plant another seed or two so it will be a fairly good size when you pluck the previous one from the soil.
Celeric can be a little tricky to grow sometimes, but worth the trouble! Ever need some celery leaves for a soup base you're making and don't have any on hand? Celeric IS celery leaves without the stalk. And growing celery is not easy, as you have to blanch the stalks by covering them from the sun, etc.
If you don't plan on having either an inside or outside herb garden, add some herbs to your salad garden. I will be planting an inner herb garden as well as planting larger growing herbs outside amidst the flowers. I've even heard of some people growing a "tea garden" in their homes this way, using the plants to make teas with :) Anything is possible!
The only drawback I have found to an inner salad garden are tiny knats that seem to thrive in the soil and like to fly around the plant. I have had the same problem with houseplants too. If you use garden grade (not swimming pool grade) Diatomaceous Earth (DE) and poof it onto the soil and beneath the first few leaves of plants, this takes care of your problem. You may have to repeat this occasionally, but it's simple and easy and the DE is actually made up of 14 trace minerals so it's actually good for you!
Our lasagne is done - better end this for now and go eat dinner :) Rebekah
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Normally, in January, we would have cheeping baby chicks running back and forth in a large cardboard box beneath a glowing heat lamp in the kitchen...but not this year.
Normally we would have our Nubian goats expecting kids in February or March and the children would spend extra time in their pen stroking their big tummies and feeding them carrots...but not this year.
Normally I would have big dreams of lucsious green gardens and would have placed orders for heirloom seeds after spending many nights in November and December pouring over the catalogs that faithfully came in the mail each year...but not this year.
Normally our shelves of home canned foods and jams would be about halfway empty and after all that work from the previous summer to put food up, I would start looking forward to canning again in the not so distant future...but not this year.
Normally we would be looking foward to the first spring eggs our pullets would lay, those small little ones that always got us excited because we knew we would soon be flooded with a steady abundance of fresh, golden yolked eggs...but not this year.
This year is going to be VERY different for us, and we are already missing our family traditions and homey lifestyle immensely. For the past seventeen years, we have lived in the country and enjoyed our homesteading existance and I now realize, we took it all for granted. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined moving to the CITY of all places - we would never have even considered such a thing and would have laughed at anyone who told us we would make that drastic move... But it happened. Not because we wanted to, but because God called us to it and we obeyed. Sometimes the hardest thing is life is obedience, especially as adults...
For now, until God moves us back to the countryside and the homestead existance we all yearn for, we are transplanted homesteaders living on the grid on a city block and on a very busy city street - yet that yearning for homesteading ways and a simple life is still coming through even here. It's in our blood, and with winter slowing coming closer to it's end, springtime and all it's beauty and magnificence is calling to our hearts with whispered memories brought to mind and new experiences promised in the coming year...
For those who have always wished to live a homestead life but have never left the city, let me encourage you that you can STILL have a small homestead in your yard and home - and everything you learn can be put to even greater use if and when you move beyond the sidewalks to country life. I hope in part, that this simple little blog of mine will inspire many wanna-a-be homesteaders to take simple baby steps to begin their dream of homesteading - while still in the confines of the city. And even if you don't ever plan on living in the country, with a little work and day-dreaming anyone can have fun and learn new things that fall under the title of "homesteader." Homesteading is in the heart, not just where you live.
But first I should tell my story - the condensed version as the full version could take years to write out! And maybe you can see that country life and homesteading is a journey, a remarkable walk through life that helps define who you are and what is important in life.
I was born in Clark County, Nevada, outside of Las Vegas and we moved to the suburbs in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California when I was four years old. My father was an incredible carpenter who could do anything - literally - even work that others thought impossible (I have some wonderful stories to tell about that - but later :) He came from back east and met my mother by chance when he was wheeled into an emergency room with two broken legs after being in a car accident. One look at my mother though his semi-conciousness and he knew she would one day be his wife.
My mother had been born and raised on a cattle ranch her father owned in northern Nevada and would tell us wonderful stories about her childhood - some were wonderful, others sounded a bit painful though :) Like when the cows stepped on her toes, or the mean barn rooster tore out her hair. But mainly she painted a wonderful picture of childhood surrounded by God's beauty and nature, his laws in action in the form of livestock, gardening and the seasons. It was through those stories that my heart began to yearn for wilder places, old fashioned ways, simpler times and homey surroundings.
Years later, after my mother's death and graduating from nursing school - I met my husband in an emergency room and knew at first sight I would one day marry him. We both wanted to move beyond the city limits - but since he was (and still is) a police officer for LAPD and there is not much "wild space" within the confines of the city of Los Angeles, we weren't sure where we could go. We were and still are tied to his job.
I'm not sure how we found our first house in Green Valley, way up in the mountains surrounded by huge scrub oak trees that were hundreds of years old - but I do remember driving that winding canyon road and how excited we both got the father we went. The house was the cincher. It was an A frame home with solid tongue and groove walls. We didn't have alot of land, but we had three lots which meant we could have farm animals and there were areas that were not shaded by the large oaks where our gardens and orchards were soon planted.
Since I'm not overly timid about jumping in with both feet - we went wild. Those first few years we had dairy goats, a dairy holstein calf, meat rabbits, goslings and geese, ducklings and ducks, turkeys, chicks and chickens galore! We learned what NOT to do the hard way - and I was even hospitalized when our dairy calf got scours and I spent hours caring for her and came down with it myself!
Our gardens grew and I canned - beaming in pride to see shelf after shelf filled with beans, carrots, corn, soups and more. I was a happy homestead wife and our home reflected that. Dried herbs hung from the ceilings, home sewn curtains hung from the windows and home sewn quilts covered our bed...smells of cooking and baking were always present and often floated down the street which is what led to meeting several of our neighbors - especially when they could tell I was baking Whoopie Pies. They always found a reason to come to visit and we spent many happy afternoons in the kitchen talking country stuff...
Soon our children came along and things changed a little. My hands became busy with our three daughters but we still kept up with everything. My husband built our little red barn behind our home when our oldest daughter just turned a year old - and the following year we planted our orchard and I lugged bucket after bucket of water to water the trees three times a week for months when our second daughter was only two months old. The next year we had a huge strawberry garden and I sat and planted 300 strawberry plants - those long strawy colored wiggly roots with the tiny few green sprouts at the top when I was eight months pregnant with our third daugther.
So much had happened between those first few days of moving to the country and where we were years later with children and an established homestead. So many things learned, wild experiences shared, and wisdom gleaned through trial and error. And then we moved again.
This time it was to a small mobile home in the middle of nowhere - actually it was Gorman, California but it seemed like nowhere. And nothing would grow in the earth there - the water turned the dirt to slimy mud which in turn turned to hard concrete when dried! It was very depressing...but this was where we had our first pigs. So the experience was not all bad. When we found out we were expecting baby number four, we found a larger place in the high desert. An acre this time - twice what we had had in our first home. It was bare, flat, brown, hot and dry. Very unappealing - but I love a challenge so my husband and I set about building a new homestead. This was a very different learning experience as the soil was empty of nutrients, the environment was very hot and dry and our animals needed immediate shade to survive.
But build a homestead we did! Several years later we not only had our three girls, but our four boys had joined us too. We had planted a large beautiful orchard that did remarkably well despite the heat and a garden area that started small but grew quite large as compost from the animal pens was added. We had a pig pen, a chicken yard and chicken coop, homemade plywood poultry brooders and a goat pen that just last year we built a barn for. Our children thrived and our family was happy and content... We raised sheep, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, meat rabbits, turkeys, geese, ducks, and more. Our children showed their livestock at the fair and won 1st and 2nd place ribbons... We were a very happy family living what we had always wanted to live - a country life!
Then God called us to step out of our comfort zone in a very unusual and remarkable way. A lady renting a room from a neighbor had many many problems - drugs and alcohol the worst of them. She was being kicked out and had no way to care for her three tiny children that she had just gotten back from DCFS. We had been babysitting for her over several months when she needed help, and she asked us to take her children and care for them "for a while."
We assumed she was going to get her life straightened out and would take her children back within a month or two...but it became very obvious she wasn't capable of helping herself and her children were at risk. Because we only had a small, modest home of 1100 sq ft, which fit our family of nine snuggly - when we took in her 2 year old boy and twin 12 month old girls it suddenly became far too cramped. We began looking for a larger home in the country - but found absolutely nothing that would fit us. In desperation, we started looking towards the city as a possible housing source, our hearts sinking with the realization that God was calling us to move back to city life to continue caring for these little ones that weren't even our own - but they are God's children and it was obvious He wanted us to care for them. We moved - in faith - that God had called us to this task and although it was incredibly hard to do, we did it.
We found our home - 2600 sq ft and only 5 blocks from the community college (where our 15 adn 13 year old daughters are enrolled in classes). Over the past year we have taken the little ones to specialists and have found they are severely handicapped with too many problems to list (and because they are still under DCFS custody, I can't divulge their medical and psychological conditions - but they are SEVERE!!!). And yes, DCFS is a constant daily and weekly source of stress for us and we have been through several investigations brought on by the very disturbed mother...
So here we are - living in the city and realizing a new year is starting and it will be vastly different than any other year we have had since our marriage began 17 years ago... We know we are exactly where God wants us to be, but it is still hard. I can hear baby chick cheeping in my mind and see my children through memories tucked away in my head as they would crowd around the cardboard box and stroke and name the colored chicks that stood out to them. I remember the frigid February nights, with crystal stars sparkling above and my breath billowing out in huge white clouds of steam as I reached into a momma goat to help her deliver a stuck kid or her quadruplets when she was too tired to push out the last one - the hiss and smell of the coleman lantern that never put light just where I needed it... I can remember those first little green shoots coming up from the ground and how excited the children were and how they raced each other to the house to be the first to tell me the potatoes or carrots or lettuce was up - and how we frantically looked for ANY empty container to cover those baby greens when a cold spell came through that would freeze and kill our hopeful harvest.
So here I am, in the middle of January looking around my yard and home and trying to think of ways to grow a little garden and do some simple homesteading type chores and tasks to help us all keep those memories and experiences and knowledge alive and well until God can plant us back in the country where our hearts still belong.
A few things we will be starting on in the next few weeks will be to clear an area next to the house for a small garden. I also plan on finding some smaller rabbits than we're used to, so I can use their droppings for the garden and to keep our children used to handling the rabbits and cleaning up after them (a much smaller job that cleaning up after a homestead full of animals!). I have already ordered the seed for a kitchen counter salad garden - something I have done before and plan to have and keep going indefinately here. I'll write more about that in another blog entry. Since our backyard is basically empty except for a few rosebushes, I will be planting grapes, raspberries and an apricot tree (I can't imagine living without an apricot tree for canning apricots for cobblers and making apricot jam!!!). Depending on the behavior of our dogs, I may turn a corner of the yard into a raised strawberry bed and grow pole green beans too that can grow up strings secured to a pole above them. The strawberries will get some shade during the hot desert summer months and the beans do very well growing up the strings racing towards the sun. I want an herb garden too - but that may need to be planted in the FRONT yard of all places since the dogs would certainly trample it. I have a nice little area picked out for my herb garden in the front and plan to intersperse herbs throughout the flowers in the front yard too. They should blend in very well and it will be a challenge for my children to figure out which herb is which when I send them out to pick a sprig for dinner!!!
I have many more ideas - but will have to wait and write them in another blog. We learned to weave last January before we moved - and I hope to get the girls going on that soon as our loom has been silent in the corner far too long! And without so much to do "on the homestead" like before, maybe now we will have time to learn to spin as well and I will be grateful I don't have to shear the sheep first! (sheep shearing was one of my least favorite things to do next to mucking out the pigpen, and I was grateful my husband didn't have qualms about sitting on the ground amid desert ants with a sheep in his lap slowing shearing away...it was the only way we could do it without hurting the sheep and it worked well but I got far too itchy myself!).
It's late, my bed is calling, and I will look forward to writing more soon. Visit often as you never know when a new entry will go up and I really do enjoy sharing my life, thoughts, faith, and experiences with others - and I haven't even mentioned anything about our business, Hope Chest Legacy and how that started!!! I had trouble at first starting this blog - but I think I'm going to enjoy it more than I realized. SO many memories and things to share and say are bottled up inside me - and I hope to inspire and encourage families to learn a little about homesteading from the comfort of their own homes, a little step at a time :) It's far simpler than you think, and it starts in your heart not where you live... |
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