The Zoo

I love Iowa. I love the heavy winters and I love the hot and humid summers. Crazy I know, but to me it is the best of both worlds. I get a wintry wonderland and picture perfect holiday and then I get the bone warming heat and humidity that really wakes me up.

Still, days like today are pretty awesome too. It was 80 ish and not humid, overcast and breezy. I took my girls to the zoo.

They were very sweet. Blueberry Girl LOVES frogs and seeing a blue frog made her whole day!

Lil'Bug struck up a conversation with the zoo staff feeding a salamander. She listed off all the frogs and toads she had caught, asked questions about the American Bullfrog in the exhibit and asked if he was intended for the Safari Grill menu. She was totally serious. She has her heart set on catching some bullfrogs and eating them. The staff member humored her and even imitated a bullfrog call for her and gave her hunting tips. Sweet.

Lil'Bug wanted me to take a picture of her smelling a flower. I played with my zoom lens and got this one picture. I am still trying to figure out how to make zoomed in pictures not fuzzy or blurry and I will NOT post blurry pictures!

See that look? Oh it was trouble. She ran out of the tube and into a puddle of mud. Threw her shoes and took off running. Through a crowd of rude stroller monsters who would not get out of the way for me to get to her. So I sent Lil'Bug after her for a tackle. Then the rude people scowled and murmured at my mad parenting skillz.

I just wanted to hide.

Sigh. The day at the zoo ended shortly after that. I could not repeat that particular parenting play again; being 26 weeks pregnant is starting to drain my energy. I knew that I had just enough in me to haul her over my shoulder and trek up the hill to the parking lot. So we did just that and went to the Iowa Reptile Rescue at the nearby mall. No big crowd, lots of hands on. Confined area. Nice way to end the outing.

Really it was a very good day with my girls. Aside from the great giggling escape, they were both excellent company and much discussion was had about frogs, turtles, and snakes.

When we got home Lil'Bug brought me this:

Maintenance Free

Well, not really. I used to joke in graduate school architecture classes that "maintenance free" means you can't fix it, you have to replace it when something goes wrong and usually pay someone a lot of money to do so. That's why people selling materials and services often push the maintenance free products.

Our life is not maintenance free. Our lives are simpler for this.

We love old houses. Much the reason I love them is that the materials were built to last if maintained. A piece of siding fails? Replace just that piece. A wooden shingle gets damaged? Replace just that one shingle. Plaster? Patch. People knew how to do the work or they figured it out. Sure there were a few super wealthy individuals who had massive grounds and servants and people who too care of these things, but they were the minority. And likely, they still knew how to do the things.


Then cars came along. At first it was the same principle that applied. People could fix their own cars when something went wrong. Things got fixed, cars lasted longer. They were built to be repaired and maintained.

Now, we take it to the shop or call an expert. The knowledge is specialized. If the work is too expensive, we junk the car or house and buy a new one or move. Disposable. Same with household appliances, they used to be built to be repaired. Buying a new one was a huge deal, fixing the simple engines were cheap and made sense.Now its just easier to send it to the landfill and buy a new one at a big box store. People often throw away perfectly working ones just to upgrade because it is so cheap to do so. We also put our trust and faith in people who are selling us things. We have to trust that they are doing so honestly and that the people we hire are doing the work competently, not that the average person would be able to tell. If you do the work yourself and research and choose your own product, you only have yourself to blame. Your motivation for quality is different. Yes, there are excellent and honest contractors and salespeople and the like, but how can you know until it is too late? The money is spent and more will be spent to repair and replace if something goes wrong early. I see this so often with new houses and new construction projects that I no longer laugh, it is tragic and an epidemic.

We recently applied the same ideology that we applied to our home...to our vehicles. It started out that all of our cars and our farm truck needed major work this past year. It depleted our savings and our resources and got to a point that when the oil needed to be changed and the brake pads started squealing, the answer was to park it and drive just our one car. Until that car had the brakes do out too. The farm truck gets horrible mileage. Driving that was super expensive, plus I needed it at home to haul feed. We had access to excellent and honest mechanics, but just had no money for it.

Then I read a friend's blog where she said that replacing your own brake pads was easy and not expensive. That she could do it herself. Huh? So I suggested it to my dear husband who really really wanted to learn this particular set of skills. I know he had hoped to learn on our farm tractor, but here was a very real need.

So he started with the brake pads. Then the next car had need of those AND a new master cylinder. Success! So then he changed the oil and air filters. He dis some maintenance on the farm truck too. We spent a couple hundred dollars on work that would have collectively cost us thousands that we didn't have. The reality of it was that we would have tried to put it off until we could pay for it and then the whole brake systems would have needed to be replaced or worse. In the meantime we'd be spending more money to drive broken vehicles or the farm truck, not really safe.

By doing the work ourselves, by gaining this knowledge and confidence we CAN keep up our investments of home and auto. We can drive and live in safety and comfort and not defer or delay repairs. We can fix and electrical short, patch plaster, fix the dishwasher and washing machines. We don't have to replace when the warranty runs out and the machine breaks the very next day (though that is still really annoying.) 

With the Internet, these things are easily accessible. There are e-How's and parts can be ordered. There are forums with experts who answer questions. There are pictures and videos. It is all accessible to us.

In the past year, in addition to our recent car repairs, we have fixed both our new dryer and washing machines, the refrigerator twice (saving our food too),  the hot water heater (no small feat since it is a tankless), the free dishwasher we got, and the kitchen sink. None of these fixes were expensive or even difficult, but replacing the items with exact models would have been collectively over $4,000. I think we spent less than $100. Some of these items were just days past their warranties, so less than 2 years old and the hot water heater was in warranty but we lived so far away from a licensed technician that it would have cost us $300 just to have him drive here.

What can you do next time something breaks? Will it break your bank?

Stripey the Broody Hen, Our First Born on the Farm Babies!

I love chickens. They are sweet, they give us eggs, they de-tick the yard, make quick work of our kitchen veggie and bread scraps, and in general just provide us with entertainment.

About a month ago, Stripey stopped laying eggs. I had to remove her from her nest twice a day to collect eggs.  She was very very broody. We had three hens doing this but she was the most insistent about staying and gentle about being puled off the nest. She was also very protective of her space.

So we decided to give her a chance.

We created a separate pen for her. Collected a days worth of eggs from all the hens, in hopes that most of them would have been fertilized. We were not really sure that Stripey's eggs had been since she had not really spent time with the rooster of late, but we put her one egg of that day in with the clutch. 9 eggs total. We fluffed a nest for her, secured it from predators, set up food and water......and waited. She immediately inspected the eggs. When she settled on them they rolled out of the nest. So we built up the sides with more hay and tried again. This time she rolled the eggs back in and settled on them proper.

21 days later....

She has hatched 7 of the 9 eggs. We got to see one of the chicks make the final push and cuddle up still wet with mama Stripey. The last two we cracked open on day 23 and inside one was undeveloped yolk. The other held a half formed chicken that would never have hatched. Lily was really sad to see it but it was a good lesson about biology and nature's way of taking care. Still 7 of 9 is a good hatch! The babies are all doing well, she taught them all how to drink and eat. She also is camera shy and gathers them under her wings whenever she sees me with my camera. I check on her a couple times a day and make sure she's doing well and the chicks are still fine.

It is neat how we didn't have to clear their butts or teach them to drink water like we do with mail order chicks. No, the nature of the birds and the parental instincts were just perfect.

Pregnancy Update

So we had an OB appointment today. I was experiencing heat flashes and moodiness, but my blood pressure is fine. Totally normal. I gained 4 lbs this month. Next month we'll test for diabetes but I have none of the other signs so I'm not worried about that. I have the orange goo to drink, and balked that it is made out of highly concentrated corn syrup. But it is what it is.

And......the baby is a boy! The doctor is 80% sure since only part of the proof was visible (the umbilical cord was also between the baby's legs. That's a pretty confident guess though.

We are still playing baby name chicken for a boy name though. Our girl name was settled, Willow Rose. But for a boy name? Yeah, I got sick of all my ideas getting rejected by the girls (who want to name the baby Harry Potter) and Chad who doesn't have a choice yet either. So I threw out THE Zaphod Beeblebrox. And he accepted?! Thus begins an official challenge, baby name chicken. Heh. Poor little Zaphod.....

Personally I think the baby rather resembles the Galactic President. Also the only man to ever survive the Total Perspective Vortex. How's that for a legacy?

In my other thoughts about motherhood......

It is not the heat that is bothering me. I love the heat and humidity, which must be the Cajun in me. No, it is not that. I am really feeling the need for coffee lately because I am not getting enough sleep. I need to stay up late to finish my online (yet full time) job after the girls go to sleep and sometimes that means midnight, and it takes me a while to wind down and fall asleep. Yet, the girls still get up between 5AM and 7AM depending on how loud Chad is when he's getting ready for work. They don't take naps and if they do by chance then they don't fall asleep until midnight either.

Usually coffee would make up the difference. And the baby I am growing is taking a lot of the energy I used to have.

I feel like a failure. I am just treading water most of the time trying to get farm things done, spend time with my kids, and keep house. Sometimes things get away from me and pile up. Sometimes I get help with those things. But that just makes me feel like more of a failure.

I realized that I am holding myself to a standard that is impossible. Most of my friends don't work full time. They stay home with their kids, keep house and garden, and some even run a farm too. The ones who do work full time don't do all of those other things or don't have small children.

Sometimes I want to scream that I can't do all of this! I get comments all the time about how people just don't know how I do it all. Honestly I don't. Or the stuff I do accomplish doesn't take much effort (like bone broth or cheese or baking bread). My to do lists are not my done lists. Those are much shorter.

I prioritize my children. They have clean clothes and healthy food. They have a mama who plays with them and reads to them everyday, takes them to park day once a week. Our livestock always has clean food and water (which is a joint effort). Sometimes the housework (rather the clutter issue) slides. Sometimes I get behind on grading. Sometimes I don't get to sit down and sew a skirt that I want to. My garden is weedier than it should be. Yet I continue to beat myself up for failing at this whole stay at home with kids thing. I'm not failing. We are all thriving.

Fall semester we are expecting a baby and I am working the equivalent of double full time at my job. More than the course load of a full timer. I can do that. We need me to do that to make it through winter since we still have not sold the Des Moines house. I am worried if I can do everything else though.

And then I came to the realization that what the root of the problem is. I keep comparing myself. Life is not a competition. I am all fumble fingers at knitting, the sewing machine is getting the best of me, and I just don't have the creative eye that so many of my mama friends have. I can't expect to be good at all of these things on first attempt either. Pining after these skills won't make me better at any of them. And the struggle I put myself to learn is not enjoyable or productive. I DO have skills though, gifts that God made me with. I can write. I can express. I can teach. I can learn. If I stop for a minute and stop holding myself to impossible standards and just relax into who I am for a bit, I think things will sort themselves out. I pray that they will.

In the meantime I have three weeks until the next semester begins and I am not going to spend it in the mire of self pity. I am going to weed the onion patch, can up some tomatoes, and cuddle my babies. I am going to chase frogs in the living room, paint a tree on Lil'Bug's wall and adorn it with glittery cloth flowers. I am going to sing in the sunshine and dance in the rain. And I am going to try really hard to stop comparing my farm, my housekeeping skills, my gifts to others who God made perfectly who they are. He also made me perfectly who I am.

I think it is a terrible trap to fall into comparing. I even compare myself to myself. How I used to be or what I used to do. When I worked full time, prior to having children, I was a rising star in my field. I loved my work, felt called to it. I loved walking into old houses and finding their secrets. I loved being an activist for historical preservation. My skill for remembering detail was put to use. Sometimes I miss that world immensely. Motherhood changed that for me, I was faced with a choice. My baby's health or my passion for old houses. We both tested positive for lead and her exposure was likely through me. My love for her grounded me and I stepped off the highway and into the woods of a life I had no map for.

Yet, here we are. Delighting in the journey. I thank God everyday for all of these blessings. It does no tribute to fall into feeling like a failure.