Getting There

This year's "harvest."

I couldn't help but put quotation marks on the word "harvest" in the title of this post. Last year my efforts at being an urban homesteader were very disappointing--I couldn't even manage to grow a few potatoes. So naturally I figured this year would be better...but I'm not so sure it was!

We did grow some string beans along the fence that did pretty well--we got enough beans for about 3 of our family meals. That's good, since I used leftover seeds from several years ago. And I have left many pods behind to dry out so we can have seeds for next year (although as I'm not sure what kind of seeds they were to begin with, I don't know if they're really sprout. I figured it was worth a try since it would cost nothing.)

And I did get a good amount of calendula for my healing salve. I filled a jar of extra virgin olive oil with dried calendula blossoms. It's been sitting in my back window for a couple of weeks now, and I think it looks so pretty and golden! I have some plantain leaves drying too, and once they are dry I'm going to top up the oil and add them, too.

I planted a number of chamomile plants but the harvest here was pathetic to say the least. I was hoping I would get enough to make tea for the winter...not quite! I think the chamomile must have loathed the damp and shady conditions in my back yard, because I only picked about a hundred tiny tiny straggly little blossoms...so after I dried them I added them to the oil for my healing salve, since the plant is known to be soothing to the skin.

I did make one single cup of weak tea, using a handful of chamomile and some lemon balm leaves...I found it funny. Some day I will do better than this! Some day I will have a lovely sprawling herb garden bursting with bountiful tea-making ingredients...just not right now.

My yarrow plant didn't get big enough to blossom, and my lavender died outright while it was still tiny. We only got 2 miniscule and sickly looking sunflower blossoms from the seeds we planted--so much for the cheerful bouquets the seed packet promised me! My stevia plant grew in leaps and bounds, but now I am not sure what to do with it because the word on the street is that the dried leaves taste terrible...

I am now working on drying some sage, basil, rosemary, and oregano for winter. I would have loved some thyme (which is delicious in my favourite winter meal, beef stew and dumplings) but couldn't find any plants this year. Maybe next year I'll order some seeds.

I planted four parsely seedlings, and they stayed ridiculously tiny! So much for that...

And then, for the pièce de résistance...behold our 2011 tomato harvest in its entirety:

Since the weather has gotten colder and frost has become a possibility, I picked these green, and tossed the plants (with disgust) into the dumpster.

Needless to say, seeing pictures of other people's enormous harvest of juicy red tomatoes has got me feeling a little jealous!

But I know it will not always be this way. Some day I will have a "real" garden...I just have to acquire a much bigger one so there are bound to be at least some accidental successes. We are hoping that maybe we will not be here in this virtually yard-less house by next year's growing season...So I will just keep hoping and praying, that this will be the last year I will have to try to grow things in a shady patch the size of a postage stamp.

Counting my blessings.

Sometimes I feel very discouraged because our dreams of having a family homestead seem too far beyond our reach. We have a lot of debt--and little savings--and it's difficult to reverse that trend with a growing family and erratic income. We are trying our best--but (and I'm sure most people can relate to this) it seems that as soon as we can save up something, a new expense confronts us. Such as now--with four children we really need a van. Our 1997 Intrepid is getting really cramped!

But although there are days when I feel that we will never save up anything, never get where we want to be, I always feel thankful for all the blessings we do have. Living here, in this small city house, might not be our ideal, but it's still a great place in many ways, and I try to remember that.

For instance, today it's raining cats and dogs, and I have nowhere to go. I feel thankful that I can stay in the house all day. If we had a homestead, there would be chores to do and I wouldn't be able to keep myself dry. Just a little thing, but still.

I'm also grateful for the conveniences that are all so close to us here. We have everything we could ever need within walking distance of our home: doctors, dentists, a library, restaurants, a produce market, a grocery store, an office supply store, a thrift store. Right across the street from us is a Walmart and a Home Depot. Although I'd prefer to see a grove of whispering birches from my bedroom window over the glaring orange sign of Home Depot, it has been very convenient for us to have all this shopping so close by, and has saved a lot of gas over the years I'm sure.

Living here, our family is close by. It's also a plus for us that the kids can easily find other children to play with when they go outside. And one block away is a large park with a big play structure.

Our house itself is comfortable. It has a garage, which has been wonderful for Chris to use as a workshop, a main floor utility room which is nice and bright for doing laundry and sewing, and a tiny back yard where the boys love to play in the sandbox Chris made them--a sandbox which he recently doubled in size. I also love our big master bedroom, and the big diningroom separate from the kitchen which provides a nice place to do our homeschool lessons.

I think it's important for us to count our blessings wherever we are, and enjoy our lives right now. We spend a lot of time dreaming about the country property we'd like in the future, about the gardens, and fruit trees, and all that; but right now we are here, and that's not all bad.

Sometimes I feel like an imposter.

Really, I do. Although we do live simply in many ways, sometimes I feel like an imposter because I am writing a blog about self sufficiency, and yet I live in a small (and ugly) city house with a backyard that is only about 150 square feet. I have books about homesteading in my sidebar, yet I don't feel that I homestead at all.

Sometimes I wonder, why would anyone read my blog? What do I have to offer, when there are other bloggers out there that can showcase their chickens and goats, their cellars full of home canning, their children roaming through the woods and hiking up mountainsides, the homemade quilts they whipped together, their cozy woodstoves in the winter? I have none of those things. When I started this blog I hoped that maybe by now we would be living out in the country, but it hasn't worked out that way.

Sure, there is such thing as an "urban homesteader," and many people do it quite successfully...but I don't even seem to have the time to really do that. I was so late getting my herb seedings started this year that they are still just small seedlings and look silly out there in my raised beds. I don't think I'm going to be able to harvest any lavender at all this year at this rate. My two tomato plants are similarly tiny, and the zuchinni...I just planted the seeds a week ago. I was also late even buying my other herb plants, so no sage, thyme, or basil for me!  And I was so excited to have a spice cupboard this winter filled with organically grown dried herbs!

My sewing machine continues to gather dust--so much for beautiful quilt I wanted to make before Amy was born--I haven't even started it! I have noticed that knitting is a favourite hobby with many bloggers, but me? I have never knit anything but square dish cloths, and a very misshapen teddy bear...and I have a feeling that is as far as I am going to get. It's all incomprehensible to me.

I am not even sure if we are going to get a chance to go strawberry picking this year, as it is strawberry season right now and Chris is so busy with work...he's doing wholesale orders for our Etsy shop and also doing other full time contract work as an industrial mechanic on the side! I suppose I could find a way to take all the kids with me...but last year it was hard enough to keep Jasper from trampling the strawberry plants with two grown ups present...I'm not sure if I can tackle that task on my own. (If you knew Jasper, you would agree with me.)

I hope we find a way, because last year's strawberry jam was sublime!

Perhaps others can relate to my struggles, and that's a good thing...I hope I can be encouraging to others who want to live a simple, deliberate life, to concentrate on the things that really matter, to do things for themselves, and yet who don't find it an easy path. I hope so, because sometimes I feel like I am only acting a part, and I feel a little nervous that someone is going to notice that I am not genuine enough, that my life is not as simple and beautiful as I might pretend. Actually, many days our house is chaotic, everyone is squabbling, the VCR gets used more than I care to admit, and supper is something out of a can or a box...Some days I am so frazzled trying to care for the children, get some homeschool lessons in there somewhere, and keep the house in reasonable order, that I wonder if I could even manage a big garden and some animals on top of it all. Although, perhaps seeing something other than asphalt outside my window might help my state of mind, I don't know...

It just seems to me sometimes that I have a long way to go, before I get to the place I want to be. A very long way!

Book Review: The Fat of the Land

One of my favourite books on homesteading and simple living is The Simple Life and How to Live It, by John Seymour, who was often called "The father of self-sufficiency." Sprinkled within that text are fascinating excerpts from an earlier book he wrote, entitled The Fat of the Land, in which he told the personal story of the homestead he and his wife created back in the 1950s on a rented property in the UK.

The Fat of the Land seems to be difficult to come across--print runs are few and of limited quantity--but last year I did find a new copy on Amazon. I enjoyed reading it very much. While some of the information is dated, and while many of the British terms Seymour used were incomprehensible to me (those pertaining to money and measurement especially), overall I did get a lot out this book.

I liked the way Seymour showed how their homestead grew gradually over time. When he and his wife first moved into their remote cottage, which they rented for a mere 25 pounds per year, they had been living for several years on a boat. They wanted to settle down because they already had one child and planned to have more. But they hadn't planned on creating a homestead in the least--it just evolved over time, as one thing led to another.

For example, they started out by getting some ducks and geese to save money on meat. Then, a cow, because it was too much work to walk a mile every morning to the nearest neighbour to pick up their milk. They then had more milk than their young family could use, so they purchased pigs to consume the excess milk--then, with all the manure from the cow and pigs they decided to increase their gardening. Then, because they then had so much land under cultivation, they bought a horse to help with the work. And of course then they needed to improve their grassland for the horse...and so on.

I liked the way he showed that while producing your own food is an economical, healthy, and satisfying thing to do, it does take a lot of hard physical work. He doesn't gloss over the amount of work that goes into a homestead, or romanticize anything about this kind of life. In fact sometimes he is rather blunt about various elements of country living. But he is enthusiastic about fresh air, unadulterated food, and hard work as an effective means to achieve good health to an old age. (And in fact, Seymour did live to the age of 90, staying active until shortly before his death.)

There is a section at the back, written for a later edition, where he gives specific advice for those wanting to start their own homestead. He is not optimistic here that many of us can do it with rising land prices, and praises the idea of communal living.

Overall, I think The Fat of the Land is a worthwhile read for those starting on their own homestead, or just dreaming of it. It will give the reader a good understanding of the way plants and animals on a small family homestead exist interdependently as part of a whole, and will also perhaps diffuse some of the overly romantic notions a few of us have about life in the country.

Book review: The Little House Cookbook.

I have always been fascinated by the pioneer time period, and I also love cookbooks featuring traditional recipes. When I was recently given this book as a gift, I knew it would be right up my alley. I dove right in and read it from cover to cover.

It's a fascinating book with surprisingly, more space dedicated to historical information than to the actual recipes. The book is divided into chapters by type of food; for example, Staples From the Country Store, Foods From the Woods, Wilds and Waters, Foods From Gardens and Orchards, and Thirst Quenchers and Treats. Each chapter begins with an essay detailing the historical information of that type of food at that time.These essays are so interesting!

Then before each recipe is a quote (mentioning the dish) from one of the books, and an explanation of how the dish would have been prepared at that time, by either Ma Ingalls or Mother Wilder. Every single recipe in the book (I think there are 100) is for a food which is mentioned in one of the books--so these recipes are truly authentic pioneer recipes, not modern interpretations of what pioneers ate.

Some recipes are there more for interest than for anything. For example, it's unlikely that I'm going to make stewed jackrabbit anytime soon...but there are many recipes here that I do want to try, especially the breads, cakes and pies.

One thing I found most remarkable about this book was the simplicity of the recipes. People in the past made food to nourish themselves--good, simple food with few ingredients. Spices and flavourings were used sparingly if at all. This is what I personally like. Today's recipes in comparison seem too fussy and fancy, with too many flavours and ingredients masking the simple flavours of the foods themselves.

A cherished addition to my cookbook collection, equally delightful and useful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is enamoured with the Little House books, even if it is read only for the historical information.

Goals for the coming year.

Out with the old, in with the new! With 2010 behind us, we're filled with ideas and plans for the new year. First and foremost, before we start up homeschooling again on Monday (we took three weeks off for the holidays) I want to clean this house from top to bottom, and get it organized! A lofty goal, yes, but I'm going to get started just as soon I finish writing this post. Wish me luck! The idea of beginning the new year with a clean, tidy house is very appealing to me.

On a more general note, here are some of our goals for 2011:

• I'm going to continue to improve my sewing skills, quilting specifically. My next project will be a quilt for the baby girl who will be gracing our home some time in late March. And although I'll be busy with a newborn throughout the spring, perhaps in the summer I'd like to try making a wall hanging to decorate our livingroom.
• Chris is planning to learn more about electricity, and wants to build his first experimental generator, since when we do move to the country he would like to get us off-grid if possible.
• Since our tiny backyard vegetable garden was a failure this year, I'm going to change tactics where gardening is concerned, and try growing herbs instead. I plan to grow a variety of culinary herbs, some of which I will preserve for the winter, and medicinal herbs, so that I can try making some herbal teas and salves. I like this plan, not only because I have always wanted to have an herb garden, but because I know that generally speaking, herbs are less fussy to grow than vegetables, and I will after all have a newborn to care for this spring and summer. 
• I want to improve my skills as a homemaker. By this I mean specifically, I want to get better at making our home a cheerful, inviting place. This is something I have never been very good at. The first thing to do in this respect is paint a brighter colour over the drab and depressing grey of our livingroom. We've been talking about doing this since we moved in here 5 years ago, but this time we're really going to do it! I believe that if we are going to live the life of homebodies, we should have a pleasant home in which to do that.
• Chris is going to do our small business taxes for the first time this year. This will be quite a learning experience, I'm sure, especially since most of our sales are in US dollars (through Etsy) but we live in Canada...but I know he can handle it. :)
• This summer I want to expand the food I preserve from just jam, to pickles and canned pears and peaches. If finances allow, I would love also to acquire a pressure canner so that then I can can virtually anything.
• We are both going to try even harder to save money towards our downpayment on a piece of land, regardless of our employment situation. We are already living very frugally, but we will try to tighten our belts even more. Some of the things we plan to do: Buy only secondhand clothes, buy larger quantities of food when there is a good sale, preserve more food for next winter, buy meat in bulk from local sources instead of from the grocery store, and simply follow the old adage: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. 

I suppose this list isn't very ambitious, but I don't want to overdo things since we'll have a new baby this year. Our main "work" is going to be saving money. I am excited to do some quilting though, and to create my herb garden. (Does anyone have a suggestion for a good Canadian seed catalogue that sells heirloom varieties?)

I feel upbeat about the coming year and all we will accomplish, and I hope my readers feel that way too. Does anyone have any goals for 2011 that they care to share in the comments? Please do...and Happy New Year! :)

(Sorry I have no photo for this post or the last...my camera batteries are dead and I keep forgetting to charge them!)

The power of boldness.

Today I just want to share some words which, when I read them recently, spoke to me.

Until one is commited, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too. Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

              --German writer and scientist Goethe

These words reminded me of how important it is to have confidence when you are following your dreams. Hesitating or doubting yourself gets you nowhere.

Chris and I have been talking a lot lately about our plans for the future, about our dream of owning our own family homestead off the beaten path. We are trying right now to step up our efforts to save money towards this goal, because we know that even though we may look pretty poor to the average person, and although we have a long way to go, virtually anything is possible if you have enough will power to actually do it.

This tree looked to me like it was reaching for the sky.

It might seem like we're fooling ourselves, but I don't think so. If we convince ourselves that we can do it--if we have enough courage--then we will do it. Maybe not tomorrow, but we will. "Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." We are trying to live by those words.

In the meantime, we will continue living a simple life here, learning and building up our skills, with faith that with enough determination, our dreams will come true.

I hope all my readers have dreams that they are working towards with boldness! I hope that a few people will leave a comment, and share with me what those dreams are. :)

Skills I would like to learn.

I posted last week about the progress Chris and I feel we've made on the road to self-sufficiency. We are always learning, and yet there are so many skills we both still want to learn. We've only just begun our journey along this particular path, to be sure.

When Everett at Living a Simple Life posted the other day a list of things he wished he could do, and then tagged me as one of the bloggers he invited to do the same, I thought why not? It would be fun to make my own list of skills I'd like to learn or improve upon, either now or some time in the future.

To begin, I really need to improve my skills in gardening. My vegetable garden was mostly a failure this year, so I guess I could say I have no skill at all in this area yet. Next year though, I'm going to try something slightly easier and try growing herbs in our small backyard--for both medicinal and culinary use.

Which brings me to my next point--I want to learn a lot more about herbs and their uses. I've been fascinated by herbs since I was a girl and always wanted a pungently scented herb garden of my own, but for some reason I never got around to it. I would even like to learn how to create my own herbal salves, teas and tinctures.

Although I have done some simple canning this year, I know very little about food preservation and I would love to learn more and do more. Someday, I want to learn how to create a real root cellar.

I do have basic breakmaking skills, but I have yet to try my hand at sourdough and I've been meaning to for so long.

I want to learn how to raise chickens and goats, but these are things I can't try for now, being in the city.

I believe that a family being able to create their own entertainment is a valuable self-sufficiency skill. With this in mind, I really want to brush up my musical skills. I used to be proficient at the piano many years ago, but no more. And I have a violin in my upstairs closet that has been gathering dust for years too.

My sewing skills are still fairly weak, I need to learn so much more. Particularly, I am very interested in quilting and I hope to start my first project very soon (just gathering the scraps needed!).

I see so many bloggers posting pictures of knitted hats or mittens they apparently whipped up in no time...I don't know how they do it because I am all thumbs when it comes to knitting and the patterns look like ancient Greek to me. I'm sure if I stick at it though I'll figure it out eventually.

I used to draw constantly--in fact, my husband and I met in highschool art class. I'd love to get back into sketching and perhaps even improve on my previous skills. What would really thrill me, is to make my own gardening journals and draw in my own illustrations of the different herbs I've grown. Yes, I know, I'm geeky. :)

I have also been interested in soap making and candle making for some time. I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to those or not! There just aren't enough hours in a day...

One last thing--I'd love to be able to identify more wild plants, and especially to identify edible plants. In general, I'd like to learn some basic wilderness survival skills since I know virtually nothing along those lines at the moment, and hey, you never know...   I think this upcoming winter will be a good one for me to do a lot of reading, and work on what skills I may. Looking over the list, I have so much still to learn...it makes me happy to think about it, because I know that whatever happens in my life, I will never be bored.

Dear readers, please leave a comment telling me what skills you would like to learn, or better yet, post a list on your blog. :)

Where are *you* getting to?

Sometimes I think about this blog's name. "Getting There"--where are we getting to, exactly?

When I started this blog back in March, I thought I would write about our journey towards a home in the country, mostly. This was the "there" I had in mind. However, circumstances have made it that it might take longer for us to get there than we originally hoped. Realistically, it may take us years to accomplish this dream. I don't mind living on a small, unsteady income--see this post--but it does mean, unfortunately, that it will take us a pretty long time to save up that downpayment on our future home, especially while we are renting right now.

So-where does that leave us? Where are we going, today? Well, it turns out we can still get somewhere from here. It turns out that while waiting for that "someday" to arrive, there is a whole lot a body can do besides twiddling their thumbs.

It was around the time I started this blog that I became serious about learning new skills. I hoped the blog would give me a push to do things instead of just talk about them--and so it did.  Although we are pretty much still newbies in all variety of skills, I can say that we've accomplished a lot this year, right here in this little city house with a tiny yard. Chris has become an accomplished woodworker, and guitar player (for those country bon fires!) and now he is starting to learn about alternative energy so we can live off-grid when "someday" comes. I've learned much about gardening this year--mostly by my failures. I've done quite a bit of canning for the first time ever, and I've experimented a lot in the kitchen, and learned to make just about everything from scratch. I'm starting to get the hang of sewing, and pretty soon I'm going to try my hand at some simple quilting. And I knit my first useful objects-- misshapen dishcloths.

We've learned all the while to be more frugal than before, and we've also learned so much about running a craft business.

It's amazing how life works, how a person can always be learning and growing, moving forward, just by putting forth a little bit of effort.

Everyone has a different idea of where they want to be on that magical "someday". An old farmhouse on a quiet country lane. An airy apartment in the big city with lots of light for doing artwork. A cottage on the beach. A dream job that allows for world travel. A book finally published...there are so many different places we can all end up. But you know, dreaming about it alone doesn't really get you anywhere. You have the take the first step towards accomplishing your dream. Whatever that dream is, I encourage you today, to take that first step. Learn new skills that you will need, do research, switch jobs, do something. Put it out there. Make an effort, and you never know what might happen. You might actually get there. :)

As for us, we will continue working quietly towards our goal and feeling the satisfaction that brings. We will continue to learn new skills and new ways to make our life beautiful and simple. I feel like in this stage of my life, everything is in a state of change. I am learning things every day, I am doing new things every day. And I love it! I hope it always stays this way and that I never become complacent. Because actually, there are many places I'd like to get, many dreams in my heart, and I only have one life to live. So I'd better get moving, hadn't I? :)

Where would you like to be in the future, and how are you getting there?

 

My garden was a failure.

This past spring, I was so gung-ho about my backyard vegetable garden. I had visions of grandeur to say the least. I should have tempered my enthusiasm with the knowledge that our tiny, high-fenced backyard gets little direct sun and really isn't the greatest place to grow vegetables. Because the actual results, were very disappointing.

The cherry tomatoes almost all split, although I was careful not to water them too much. Then the plants shriveled up and looked horrid.

The potatoes, as I have posted about before, were an utterly dismal failure. We didn't get a crop at all.

The melons all rotted but one, which then split open before it was ripe. We tried to eat it, but it tasted bitter.

All THREE crops of green onions I tried growing shriveled up and died while the plants were still tiny.

The chives I tried growing from seed also shriveled up and died.

The parsley I grew from seed seemed all right at first but now it looks diseased.

The diseased raspberry canes produced only a small handful of raspberries which frankly weren't very good. 

The heirloom tomato plant I was growing in a pot produced two small tomatoes that were bitter and inedible.

About a week ago, I was so disgusted with the whole yard that I ripped everything out. The only plants remaining are my diseased parsley, and the mint and lemon balm in the corner that won't go away no matter what I do.

Now where the raspberries were, is just dirt:

Where the potato box, melons and cherry tomatoes were is just dirt:

Okay, and a potato that Jasper threw from the upstairs window. Don't ask.

I like the garden better this way. Rather than seeing my failures, I can look at the bare dirt and imagine that next year things will be better. Well, if we are still living here. With another child on the way, we are hoping maybe to be able to move this winter to a home with a bigger yard and maybe a bit more room inside, too. We don't know what's going to happen though, because it's pretty near impossible to find a decent place to rent for a decent price, and we're unfortunately in no position to buy our own place, not yet. But we'll keep looking and hoping.

In the meantime, I'm done with gardening for this year.

We also grew some heirloom tomatoes using a small chunk of my grandmother's sunny backyard. They were Bonny Best, and although the plants produced pretty well, we honestly didn't like the flavour of these tomatoes very much, and sadly a lot of them actually went to waste. Also at my grandmother's we grew zucchinis and green beans, which I guess were the only things that could be called a success this year.

Next year. Next year will be better. Now I'm going to turn my mind to other things...homeschooling, Autumn, sewing, decluttering, organizing, our Etsy shop...there's always something to be working on.