Home is where your heart is......

Home. That concept for me if complicated. We moved a lot as a kid and my home life was, well, we'll just say....turbulent. When people ask me where I am from, I have no answer. The places I've lived? The people? I don't really associate with any of it. I've lived in Iowa almost half my life, so that is the closest I get.

My husband asked me of the farm house: Can you call this home?

Wow. That question has really set in my heart. Because really, I will follow him to the ends of the earth. Where he is, where my children are, that is home. That's not what he meant, but that is really the heart of it.

We've been back to the farm house. I took better pictures. I allowed myself to get excited. Now I am listening to Christmas music and cleaning house. I spent a good part of the morning on the phone with insurance, utillity companies, the chamber of commerce, the county development corporation, and both the realtor and my Dearest.

We took a break and visited an old friend and her brood. Little anxiety over that, but it went well, I think.

Tomorrow we are going back. We are closer to our dream than ever before. We are in that excited, anxiety, frantic, calm before the change phase. You know what I mean? It is hard to explain.

Me? I'm craving Cajun food and Christmas cookies.

My House That Is For Sale......

The amazing Sarah at SarahSignature came over yesterday with chocolate and took these pictures. These are my favorite ones, though they are all amazing.

It occurred to me that we may not live here long and many of you ask what my big Victorian mess, I mean, house looks like. Well, here it is! I'll post more next week.

Also, a big thank you to my MIL and GMIL who came over and cleaned and arranged furniture.

Dreaming Big

I've always been one to dream big. When I was younger I was often mocked by friends and family for my lofty goals. It was not until I was an adult that my tenacity and goal orientation (obsessed focus) paid off. My impatience and my big dreaming.

But first let me tell you about my day......
7 AM load car with sleeeeeepy, cranky girls. It is raining.
7:10 AM Pull over to feed, discover milk duct yeast infection.
7:20 AM Pull over, change Blueberry's diaper, discover that what I thought was yeast infection was actually red paint from painting night before.
7:25 AM Finally leave DM city limits and head south to meet Realtor at farm previously mentioned (the big pond with house restored by Amish people....)
8:20 AM pull into town, easily find road, 30 miles short of Google maps? Ok. Turn in, read addresses, check maps, assured farm is 1/2 mile away down this road.
8:21 AM Road turns into Grade B access road. I can see the farm. Turn in.

8:22 AM Get stuck in mud. Call Realtor who says he's on his way and going to help us. Call Dearest. Get mocked by Dearest and his co-workers. I hand Lil'Bug a chunk of cheddar cheese:

8:40 AM Realtor arrives. Verifies stuckness. Heads over to the neighbors to borrow truck to tow us out. Yay. I get to meet my possibly new neighbors. Lil'Bug proceeds to spit out cheese go and paint her car window and seat. Car smells like cheddar and......poopy diaper? Gah. Get out, sink 6 inches into the mud while sloping around the car to get out Blueberry and change her diaper AND then feed her.
9:20 AM Get towed out. Still raining. Follow Realtor to farm. Get reassured that every southern Iowan gets stuck in the mud at least once.
9:30 Amish family is home. I somehow must have violated every single etiquette rule ever. I try and photograph house, not very successfully.

9:50-10:30 AM Head outside to photograph farm buildings and lake. It is still raining. End up with not very many, not very good pictures, find a beehive, and get soaked up to my waist, but at least no longer as muddy. Listen to Lil'Bug throw a couple fits.

Yes. That's honey.

10:30ish AM Get back on Hwy 14 and head home. Car starts to shake over 35 MPH. Alignment messed up durring tow? Gah. Drive home taking back roads going 35 MPH. In the rain, pulling over to feed, re-diaper, find pet cricket, cry in the rain.
12:55 PM Get home. Wet, muddy, cranky. Dump kid in bath. Answer phone. Try to download photos to dump to flickr (if you know my account, the pics are there now) but computer freezes and eats them, deletes from my camera. Gah.
2:PM Retrieve pictures from obscure folder on desktop. Sarah calls.
Rest of Afternoon:
Sarah arrives to take pictures. Hold squirmy baby while shoving toys and bins and tornado tots into places behind camera to photos can get taken. Done. Eat chocolate, drink tea. Answer Dearest's 35 million+ phone calls to me to ask questions about the farm and the pictures.


Get excited about the farm. Decide to go back tomorrow to take better pictures and such.

Dream Big. Start picking out house colors.

Who's Side Are You On?

Today Lil'Bug exclaimed, "Who's side are you on? Don't give him the Oregano!" As I was handing dearest the seasoning for dinner.

She was betrayed deeply when I handed it to him because obviously I was not on her side.

She also informed me that she was going to open a flower shop because she has lots of flowers and she'd be good at it.

She licked the mirrors at the eye doctor. Then she was thrilled to help clean them.

It has been a day like that.

Me, I am filled with a restlessness. We put our home on the market and, even though the market is terrible, I half expected at least one call by now. Even though the house isn't technically ready. Even though the picture isn't up yet on Realtor.com. Even as I have a pile of laundry to get through, drapes and pictures still to hang, and some painting to do. I expected a call. At least one.

It is more than that. We will be caught in a middle phase when we do sell. We can look for a house now, not able to buy until we sell, or we can wait and either way we can't buy until we sell so the new house has to be on the market when we do sell OR we need to find a place to rent for a short while and we have 2 birds, a dog, a cat, and 2 tornado tots. And a short while could be anywhere between 6 weeks and 2 years. And we may end up moving to Ohio. It is a time of great change and just thinking about it sends me into a small panic.

So do we get our hopes up for the 40 acres with pond, a turn of the last century home restored by an Amish family? Or do we quit tormenting ourselves with all the possibilities Realtor.com has to offer and wait until we sell to even look? I spent at least an hour looking today when I should have been painting or making apple butter.

I need to be able to visualize. I need to have something in mind to work for. So far my hopes and prayers have been with the visual focus of an apple tree. Is that silly? I have always been a dreamer. The dreams help me work toward goals.

Our goal is simple: we want an acreage to homestead. We want to raise our own food, everything: milk, cheese, eggs, fruit, berries, nuts, veggies, grains, honey, fish- everything. Then, maybe we could consider a CSA once we become self supporting. It will be a lot of work. I love a challenge. I also want sheep for wool. I want to learn to knit our own socks. I want to raise chickens and pick fruit at sunrise and run and play in the sunshine in an open field of wild flowers with my children.

Completely unrelated, I got assigned another Lit class for the Spring semester! Now I'll be teaching Kid Lit and Science Fiction. Neat.

So, while these thoughts are not completely as articulated and organized as I would like, neither have I been.

VERY Busy Week

This week and weekend has been a whirlwind of frenzied chaos, to an end, it will bring order to our home.

Basically, we have been working our behinds off finishing loose end projects around the house.

However, were are some highlights from last week:

Blueberry watching clouds while we picked MORE apples. Yes, more. :) Seriously, half my deep freeze is filled with sliced apples and I have another bushel to process. Applebutter on Tuesday. Yummers. The babe looks so serious with her cloud watching. She laughed and squeaked. Then she started singing. I've never heard or heard of a baby doing this, singing, but that's what it sounds like and she bursts into it when she's really happy. Very cool. Also, before I took the picture, Blueberry had stretched her little body and reached her tongue out to lick the half eaten apple left by Lil'Bug on the blanket. Her official first taste of food other than mama milk. The serious look may have actually been annoyance that I moved her away from the apple.

Lil'Bug got the hang of tree climbing this week. The child has no fear. None.


No fear + little balance/attention span= fall on to mama holding camera. Lil'Bug has been a ball of volitale, nervous energy and things have exploded in her wake. I don't blame her. Change is scary, but the worst part is the calm before the change happens.
Lil'Bug and Dearest enjoy the view of a friend's farm. She was so gracious to let us come and raid her trees. The day spent there was glorious, indeed.

We brought home TWO more bins full.

This is what I have left to process.

My work station. I have seriously clean hands and lovely lemon juice bleached fingernails.

This pie is made with lard crust. I will never ever, ever, ever go back to the other ways of pie crusts. 1. It was simple divine and flaky and 2. It was simple. Um, I mean, really really hard back breaking labor. Hours and hours of work in the kitchen, did you hear that Dearest? I realize you think otherwise, given that I was in the kitchen at 10 AM and the pies were done and cooling by 11Am BUT here's the thing. I bent time. It's stretchy like that. I only use my super power in times of dire need like finals writing (or now, grading), cleaning house (the entire house) in the 25 minutes before Realtor shows up, or pie baking. Each task requires 10 hours of labor. Really. I stretched time.

No, I will no abuse my power just to fold laundry and make beds. Emergencies only.

;)

Done and Signed

We just signed the agent listing papers to sell our home of the last 10 years. This is just one of many steps we have taken to begin a new journey and buy our dream: an apple orchard and farm.

For now I plan to blog update about that process here, but I am considering a second blog to document our process. Any thoughts?

More later, right now I have to finish painting the never ending hallway of doom. Gah.

Apple in My Eye

Last week a co-worker of Dearest's invited us to pick apples at her farm.

Ooooooh. Apples. I love apples. Really. A lot. (((((drool)))))

I finally had an excuse to buy a fruit picker arm.


The drive there was lovely.

Once we were there an older guy was working on a tractor. He helped me at first as I got set up and got the hang of it. He thinks the apple tree is the variety Wealthy. Neat. Also, they are absolutely delicious.

They are organic by neglect. Appearantly no one even picks them. I don't understand. How can you not eat the glorious fruits if they are growing in your own back yard.

While I was picking, Lil'Bug got a hold of my camera. I have never let her touch it, somehow she not only got the hang of it but has excellent eye for composition. I'll do a separate post with her pictures.

I got the hand of the tool, but before that happened I was beaned in the head a couple times by falling fruit. No, I did not invent calculus later that day. I did however eat a lot of apples!

I brought home a bucket load. Wealthy are not good for storing so I will be making pies, pie filling, and apple butter.

Berry Berry Good

Two days; cherries, strawberries, and gooseberries. Good times!

Friday Part Three: Chicken Little

"I love you this big!" She declares herself a chicken and sets off to do chicken-y things. Yes, her pants ARE already wet from being thigh high in a 6 inch farm puddle (see previous post)......


Is she a chicken or a pig? To be fair the only sort of clean part of her is the only place she got sunburned. This is a totally different puddle, by the way. Look closely and see her boots are off her feet AND packed with mud.


This is inside the chicken pen. I love that this family let her play and explore the hen house and chicken yard. She collected eggs too. We brought four home and she hugged them in the carton all the way home (yes, one broke!). It was her treasure for sure. We've been to many farms the last year and the coups have all been off limits for various reasons. When I was a kid, we had free access to them and did just fine. Lil'Bug and her friend played for hours with the chickens and ducks. She even ate some cracked corn. Not yummy. I had to bathe her twice. The second time was a second round of muck after the first bath.


Where did her boots end up? As a monument to childhood mucky fun! :)

As we got ready to leave, A. noticed I had a VERY flat tire. She tried to air it up, but it wouldn't hold the air. I'm still on lifting restriction from surgery, so she changed my tire for me. Seriously. She is a super hero. I'm not sure I could do it myself anyway. It's been 15 years since I last changed a tire and it was on my 1971 VW super beetle (the one with a duct taped axle...).

Also.....
I ate hummus. You know, I had never eaten hummus before because in my mind I had confused hummus with haggis and could never figure out why such a thing was so popular at all the mom groups. Last year I discovered the error and since had not had a chance to taste it. It is sooo delicious! That particular error is so typical of me. Gah.

Friday Part Two: Sugar Creek Farm

Lil'Bug pausing for a brief moment to gaze over the field and pastures. Me too. It sets my heart afire again to pursue the farm dream.

I love, love, love this farm. It is a CSA, but since we grow our own, we don't have a share. Perhaps we should, to supplement in the things we cannot grow ourselves. Something to think about for next year. We were invited out to help make mulberry jam, but we got there after the jam making was over. No time was wasted by Lil'Bug though. She had a tea party, played with a kitten, and headed outside to meet the chickens and horse.

This is Sunny. A very cal and gentle horse. When we were little Aunt Bee was bit by a horse, so I was nervous about the apple feeding. Unnecessarily. It was awesome.


He he, horse apples. Sorry. Had to say it. They are! FOR the horse of course!


This is the "farm pond" that Lil'Bug found. This girl can find a puddle in a desert. However, with the heavy rains, there are spots like this everywhere we go, thus the muck boots. What comes next?

Finally, We've Started (and other random thoughts)

We got a storage unit and started packing into bins a few things, like baby (9 months+) clothes and table cloths and the Christmas ornaments we are keeping (anyone local want a really nice, real looking 8 ft fake tree?). We sold the death trap duct taped canoe and we are storing the new boat in the storage unit. Dearest joked today that the new one needs duct tape too. NOT FUNNY.

Already the house is feeling cleared out. I still have 15 cans of paint, but that is way better than what we started out with. I still have to hang some more curtains and pictures here and there. Dust really well. You know, the standard get your house ready to list with an agent stuff. Still, progress is progress.......

I have to decide if we should list the house for sale with an agent before June Bug is born or in July (post recovery from possible C-section). The decision is mine. I will decide once (if) the house is ready. So far, I am leaning towards May instead of July. Bah. We'll see.

We will begin garden planning soon. With the housing market the way it is, chances are we will be here through harvest season. We've decided to do plants instead of seed this year, for ease of planning in May/June.

We found a new pool. The one we go to on the East side is 12$ a person except on Thursdays when it is 2$ a person. Park day is only on Thursday. Lil'Bug wants to swim more often AND we need a park day. So the pool by Nana's house is 2$ a person, has weeknight and weekend swims. It's chlorine, but warm enough and they have a really nice staff. Did I mention it's 3 blocks from Nana's house? Great Grandma is going to love that when she visits!

That's it for today!

Farm Day

We visited a friend on her CSA farm yesterday. Wow. What a treat! Her daughter and Lil'Bug are pretty close to the same age and temperament. This meant that the first hour or so of them getting to know each other involved crying, throwing things, and more crying. Then they warmed up to each other and played pretty well.

I got to talk food, diapers, babies, houses, schoolishness, farming, etc. Good times that. Before we knew it, it was time to go. A very good day indeed.

The Farm Thing/Dream

Today is very very busy with Birthday Girl activities so you all get a post I've been working on.

Ok, the farm thing. I grew up on a farm/ranch sort of, in rural Colorado, off and on through my childhood. My dream then was to live in a concrete flat with metal furniture and lots of abstract paintings and weird music. Funny now. For a wedding present a neighbor taught us how to garden our 25 X 17 ft yard. We quickly out grew that and bought a bigger fixer upper house, with a bigger fixer upper yard, then bought an adjacent lot for more garden space.

There are problems with gardening/farming in the city. Livestock restrictions for one, though some places allow 10 or less chickens, if housed and penned. Lead soil contamination is also an issue. Exhaust, dust, noise, etc....

We built raised beds and planted fruit trees. We have yet to get any fruit because of the hooligan children who live next door; they keep vandalizing the branches before blossoms set. We have a 6 ft fence to no avail.

We garden the veggies and trees organic. This means picking off pests by hand (or shop vac) and composting.

We've been visiting farms and talking the business side of things with the farmers. Two sites I am following, both are unschoolers: Pile of Omelays and Sugar Mountain Farm. There is actually a homesteading unschooler's ring too; I found it on Doc's Sunrise Rants.

We are moving soon so we started looking at farm properties both near and far just to get a good idea of what we will need. Here is what I have learned so far:

1) Check for urban growth and development encroaching. 10 acres is a minimum for us, but it has to be away, away from housing (I don't mean other farm houses.)
2) Ag near by: no hog confinement lots please. Corn fields are a potential hazard too because of "drift" or over spray of pesticides. A slightly windy day could take out all of your vegetables. Pasture is good, but roaming livestock will require good fences. Wooded can also mean shelter for predators.
3) Out buildings. What we decided we need is a good multipurpose barn. One property we looked at had a 3 level: hay loft, main floor for pig, cow, horse, poultry, and a walkout basement level with more horse/cow stalls and a sheep/goat pen. Perfect. They had a milk house that had been converted to a smoke house. Then a machine shed/4 car garage. the multipurpose barn is something we are now looking for. We saw another property with twice the acreage but a separate building for each and it seemed sooooo much smaller. We also want a pond.
4) Viable well water. Past wells surveyed. Old farmsteads just covered the hole when a well dried up. In Iowa we have aerial maps for the past 80 years to tell us where these are and back fill them. Very dangerous.
5) The house itself. Electrical wiring, heat source, etc.....Farmers like to do their own repairs. Sometimes good, sometimes not. A modern update can be more detrimental than one done in the 1950's. Good, fast, or cheap: pick two. Can you guess which ones our "peers" like to choose?
6) Flood plains. Check.
7) Generator and food stock. Winter storms can really bury you in.
8) Internet access. Some places in rural Iowa are actually wire-less as in there is no way to get a wireless signal or even dial up. Satellite connection only. Can be very expensive.
9) Nearest hospital? Get trained as an EMT first responder and volunteer with the fire department. This alone may save your life or someone you love's. In rural Colorado, the nearest neighbor was 20 miles and the nearest hospital was 120 miles. My aunt was the paramedic and they owned their own firetrucks. I can remember more than one occasion where someone knocked on the door and said their been a car accident. Sometimes, they were a bloody passenger/survivor who walked 5 miles to her house on the hill. Sometimes it was too late. I also remember when my baby sister ate a bottle of heart medicine, there was no trip to the ER. We had to work fast. Cells phones (where there is a signal) and helicopters have made this less of an issue, but not much less. Ah, and fires? If your house goes up, it's likely a loss since you'd hope someone is close enough to see the smoke, call it in, and then wait for the volunteer fire department to gather.
10) Gas prices are only going up up up. Cost of commute and activities with friends will too and might be impossible in adverse weather. Consider changing vehicles (though what we drive will work rural too...)
11) An added concern in Ohio are the natural gas well pumps on almost every rural farm we looked at. Bonus is that some of these homes get free gas from the gas companies as a kick back for the pump and royalties, downside is how dangerous the pumps can be.
12) Check for meth labs. Check in the woods, in the outbuildings, in the basement/crawlspace, in the bathtubs. Those chemicals are very very toxic.

We've been practicing for years now. We are so ready. We will not be doing it as a business though. We will be "homesteading" and producing only what we will need and maybe selling meat to friends or setting up a booth up at a farmers market on a whim. We will start with chickens and a pig, then add a cow, and go from there.

Ok, that's all I have for now!

Farm Crawling: Inch by Inch

In the sunshine is a little brown caterpillar inching through imminent danger, aka a chicken house full of hungry chickens:


Freedom! Well, almost. Not chicken dinner, but caught (we like to think rescued) by a boy.

What kind of caterpillar is it? What kind of butterfly/moth will it be?

Farm Crawling: Getting Your Goat

We hope to have sheep or goats someday. This was a neat milking parlor set up. The goats were very kind to Lil'Bug and the goat cheese so very yummy. It didn't keep well in the fridge though, much to my disappointment.

Farm Crawling: Don't Worry, Bee Happy

Many of you who know me, know that I love bees. I used to be a little afraid of them, I used to get stung. My husband and daughter are bee charmers, which I thought was a biological thing. I have since come to the suspicion that it is more of a learned fear issue. I can't tickle bees like Dearest Husband can but they crawl on me and then fly away. We have an apiary set up in our basement (don't worry, vacant) and it is one of the few things moving with us.

Of course we explored the apiaries at one of the farms:

This is a friendly hive, the farmer informed us:

This one is more grouchy. The more grouchy ones are placed farther out in the fields away from the tour traffic. Perhaps they are grouchy from just being honey harvested?

This is a freshly scraped honey comb.


I can't wait to bee on a farm!

Farm Crawling: Meeting Thanksgiving Dinner

I have this thing about food. I like to meet my food, or at least know the people who have cared for it. I like eating happy pigs. There is accountability that way for all of us.

Have you ever toured a factory or mass producing meat place? The animals can be forced fed, kept in small pens, force bred, treated like animals, and then lined up for slaughter. Conveyor belt processing of their carcass into food. Chicken nuggets for example: made from chicken slurry. OMG. Yuck.

Anyway, we found this great event through an announcemnt on our locl homeschool idea board: the farm crawl.

This is Lily meeting the father of our Thanksgiving dinner (I hope we order in time!)


This is Lily viewing the flock in which we hope to get our heritage breed Turkey. Yum.


I'll post more, see the following posts. :)