Burns Best Farm

Back in the Saddle

I got a text box for the first time since Saturday morning.  Great to see.  Haven't had any time to surf around to see what everyone else is up to; it's been busy here.  We've gotten rain twice, yesterday and today, and both times the rain was plentiful but not too hard.  We need it so bad and it's a joy to see and hear it fall.

We also attended the Marietta Market on Saturday for the first time this summer.  The beans and squash have been prolific and I had some blackberries to sell as well, so we set up our booth and got to visit with some of last year's customers and vendors while making a few new friends.

The rain has stopped and I need to gather some beans for supper tonight.  I'll check back later to see what's happening in the world.

Which Came First?

The chicken or the European?  This is a neat article on Yahoo! that tells about an archaelogical dig in Chile that has unearthed chicken bones that precede European settlement of the Americas.  The Araucana chicken is apparently very close in DNA structure to Polynesian chickens and nowhere near the DNA structure of chickens that were introduced by European settlers.

Isn't that cool?  That scientists can isolate the DNA structure of a chicken I have in my backyard and tell me where in the world it orginated?

I think I'll go outside right now and speak a little teriyaki to my Araucanas......hmm....teriyaki chicken.  No wonder they go so well together.......

Sightings on the Homestead

Today, at lunchtime, I spotted two coyotes in our backyard.  Our dog and my mom's dog happened to be close by and they sparred with the coyotes and forced them back into the woods.  I'm not too terribly fond of our dog under normal circumstances, but I was proud of her today and she probably bought herself some time and treats for her heroism.

On Saturday we found a big ol' turtle under the fence surrounding the berries.  She had dug a hole and was busy laying eggs. We saw a couple underneath as she worked her way forward to fill her hole.  We have the site marked so we can monitor the hatch.  Very exciting.

Tonight the bard owl was calling to us as we sat on the porch.  I love that sound.

Our peach tree served as a nesting spot for a pair of bluebirds earlier in the spring.  Three out of five eggs hatched and all three birdlings made their way successfully out of the nest.  We recovered the two eggs that didn't hatch and have them in a safe place.  Then, all weekend and then again today I saw another pair (or maybe the same pair) of bluebirds flitting around the same nesting spot.  I hope we have a second family to hatch.  I love bluebirds.

Blogiversary

Today is my one year blogging anniversary.  The homesteading highlight of the day was the discovery that my 10 day old chicks can now roost on top of the watering containers in the brooder box.  I have to sneak up on them to see it, because if I spook them with any noise, they all scatter.  But if I'm sneaky......then I catch them hanging out, enjoying the view.

Have I mentioned that I love watching these chickens?

I have enjoyed getting to know you all this last year and reading about your adventures in homesteading.  Thanks for dropping by my little corner and I'll try to be more diligent to post more often.  This farming thing in the spring is pretty time consuming!  It's one thing to write about it in the winter and something all together different to try and keep up when there's outside work to be done and the weather dictates it be done NOW! Thanks for understanding.

DeniseB

Bees

This post is probably better suited to Harriette's beekeeping blog, but bees are on my mind this week. We got a lunchtime visit yesterday from the two retired gentlemen who own the hives on our farm, and the news was not good.  Of the 13 hives located here, only six are alive and working.  Seven hives either contain a dead colony or the bees are just absent. Gone.  Nowhere to be found.

What started out last fall as a cause for concern about "rental hives" that move up and down the east coast following crop pollenation needs has turned into a full-blown crisis, with a name to match:  Bee Colony Collapse Disorder.

The experts don't know what's going on:  is it a new class of pesticide that confuses the bees, preventing them from finding their way home?  Or is it a virus that attacks the hive and deforms the larvae, causing death to the colony?  Combination of these two factors?  Or one of several other options? 

No one knows and the mystery is widening.  But what we do know that is some crops, like apple, almonds and blueberries, are almost totally dependent on honeybee pollenation for fruit to set.  And the cost of new queen bees to repopulate a hive has tripled in the last year.  For bee hobbyists, that quickly translates into costs high enough to make one think twice before repopulating a hive.  Especially when there are no guarantees that the colony collapse won't hit again.

Gloom and doom, I know, but I've started to think  that researching this honeybee problem might be worth taking some money out of the national defense budget for.......just my opinion.  That, and $1.75 will get you a cup of gourmet coffee.......

DeniseB

Free Land in Alaska

A modern day homestead opportunity in Anderson, Alaska:  free land.  The article details the landscape/terrain and the temperature ranges throughout the year.  The town sounds like it's full of what we all move to the country for:  low crime, quiet, and a do-it-yourself spirit.

Pass it along.....free land!

Update:  Welcome all you AOL surfers.  Thanks for stopping by Homestead Blogger to visit our community of people who love the land and who seek to be more self-sufficient in the way that we live.  Please browse around my archives and visit the other bloggers here from all over the world. 

Denise B

I'm just saying....

...that getting the McMurray Hatchery catalog in the mail today is almost as good as getting a Christmas card from a close friend.  Almost.

Best Books Read This Year

I am slow getting onto the "2006 vs. 2007" recapping bandwagon.  Some of the bloggers here at Homestead are very focused individuals, with last year's goal lists in hand as they revise and add to their goals for the new year.  I am simply not that organized and maybe not even that motivated.  I should be, but right now, the feeling just isn't happening for me.

What I am moved to do is list a few books I read this year that have made a difference in how I see the world.

First, I made it a goal to read all the way through the Bible using the M'Cheyene reading plan.  This has been a goal of mine for a couple of years, and I always fall short and get behind and drop out.  But it's a worthy goal and I'm signing up for another shot!  Keep me accountable, will you?  Even though I didn't finish, I got farther than ever before, and reading the Bible will certainly change your life if you let it. 

Second, I recently finished The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  I recommend it to anyone remotely interested in our nation's food supply and how business affects how and what we eat.  It is well written, not at all snoozy for such a large subject topic with national policy implications (can you say C-Span nap?) This hardcover book is available from Cumberland at a great price.

Third, My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme.  This was such a sweet story about how Julia met and married her husband, Paul, and about how they wound up in France.  She was an inspiration to me when I was younger and there was much about her that I didn't know that makes me like her even more.  She didn't have a career really until she was forty, and her first book took longer to get published than it took the US to put an astronaunt into orbit around the earth!  Wonderful lady and a great, full life well written in this book.

Last, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I read this aloud to the boys this summer, really based on a passing comment made to me by Meredith, a friend from church and a fellow homeschool mom.  I had never read it and on it's face, it did not look like a book that would command the attention of my two older sons (7 & 5).  They loved it and so did I.  We haven't started any of the additional books in the series but we'll get to them soon enough.  Reading this book reiterated to me the necessity to reading good books out loud to my children, regardless of age.  If I have a worthy goal to shoot for this coming year, it will be to do more reading aloud. 

There!  I did it.  I made a year end list!  Woo Hoo!

(I did read more than four books this year, but these were of particular enjoyment to me and I would recommend them to you, too.  If you have one you've read that you can recommend to me, please pass it along in the comments.)   

New Computer For Christmas!

Happy Christmas to all of you!  After more than a month of no online access due to a dying Dell, my dear husband gifted me with a new laptop computer today!  We're still loading things on and backing up all the stuff on the old desktop, but from now on I should be back in the blogging business. 

I hope everyone has had a wonderful December and a merry and sweet Christmas Day to celebrate the Ultimate Gift.  I might not post again for a day or two, but I'll be going through and catching up with all that you've been posting and will probably be leaving a few comments along the way while I get up-to-date.

Send me a note or comment if there's something important out there I need to read.  Would love to hear from you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Denise

A couple of discoveries here

It's been a quiet couple of weeks for me here at the 'ol blog.  We haven't been super-busy, but we're not just sitting around, either.  We had out-of-town company for a week, which was wonderful and fabulous.  The boys loved seeing their aunts.  Everyone has been well, for the most part, which is a blessing, as most of late September and early October was not as healthy.

I have been paying attention to the time I spend on the computer, and it has been revealed to me that if I spend any time whatsoever staring the screen in the two hours before bedtime, I cannot fall asleep and stay asleep.  I've had this insomnia issue pop up periodically for the last several months and I could not get a handle on what was causing it.  From now on, I cannot surf, blog, or otherwise spend time on screen after 8:00pm.

Which is a bummer!  Because I have small children, and I homeschool, I don't spend much time during the day online.  The time after supper and when the kids are in bed has traditionally been the time I spend reading blogs and researching various topics of interest.  Now, that research can only be done if I'm looking at at printed page!

Other discovery:  I like this Nourishing Traditions cookbook and I am slowly getting used to the idea that I won't be buying boxed/processed goodies anymore.   Not that I've made the huge cultural shift I was planning back in the summer, but slowing down and thinking about the purchases/meal planning has required that I pay more attention to the ingredients and procedures. 

Anyway, there's a lot more going on and I need to blog about it this week.  All of it is good and wholesome and it will make me a better gardener and teacher.  Or it should.  That's the prayer and the plan, anyway. 

Ya'll have a good day and I'll check in with as many of you as I can in my few remaining computer hours before I go all zombie-like!

"Teach your child a trade"

My husband and I have said this to each other repeatedly in the seven years since our first son was born.  At first, it was a bit of a joke.  We had mildly renovated our house, paying to have the big work done, and for the first time in our adult lives we saw what a skilled tradesman could earn from people like us who had good jobs but no real building skills.

In the years since, through the process of homeschooling and other self-education, I have become more convinced of this truth than ever.  When talk turns around to what our college plans are for the three boys, I find myself saying, "This one will be a plumber, this one will learn to be an electrician, and this one a carpenter.  Between the three, we'll have our own construction firm!"  People then look at me like I'm nuts for saying out loud that I would be thrilled if my son became a plumber!

We're at home today from church because of sniffling noses and hacking coughs (allergy season here in the south) so I have a bit of time to read the esoteric research publications online that I only look at when I've read every other interesting blog and farm website I can find.  So today I ran across a good article, Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford.

It's printed this month in The New Atlantis, a journal of technology and society. 

Crawford has a good bit of formal education.  He also discovered that he enjoyed owning a motorcyle repair shop and working on solving the engine problems of vintage motorcyles.  He talks about the social currency he receives from being "the guy" who can fix things in a community where everyone is sitting at a desk with a computer monitor, engaging in the "knowledge economy" that the education and government people tell us is the "way of the future".

The article is a bit long, and sometimes it gets a little high-minded, but there are a couple of paragraphs worth quoting.  I'll re-print the conclusion here and you can find the rest yourselves:

"So what advice should one give to a young person?  By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade.  You're likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems.  To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable." (10/9: edited for a typo correction)

I find a bit of social currency myself in being a hobby farmer who has successfully sold what we've raised ourselves.  Other moms I know keep accounting books, provide PR services, tutor, and in-home healthcare, all part-time.  I have in the past envied them their knowledge and education, thinking that if I had only had more insight into the future, I would have trained more specifically for a career.  Now, I'm thankful for my broad liberal arts education that was just specific enough (food service management/business) to allow me to grow and change. 

Pumpkin Harvest in Short Supply

This Yahoo! headline greeted me a few minutes ago.  I read through and found the causes are abundant rain in August combined with high temperatures.  Several bloggers have shared their disappointing pumpkin crop stories already this year.  I hope this article will make you all feel better.....even the research experts were surprised!

Thanks to everyone who sent pretzel recipes in response to an earlier bleg.  We haven't had time this week to make any of the submissions, mostly because I can't get all the children in this house well from a long, lingering cough.  No one seems to be infectious or contagious but in public, people are starting to look at us like we're a walking TB factory.  Hopefully we'll get it under control today.

Thoughts on the Spinach Contamination

Here are my Random Thoughts on the nationwide spinach contamination situation:

First, according to this AP article from earlier today, the farms that are thought to be the source of the e.coli are not organic farms.  My husband and I had a bit of a running wager that the source would be an imported product, most likely organic (the e.coli coming from manure that had been improperly handled before being added to compost.)  The farms under investigation are all in California and there's a special note in the article pointing out that the contaminated spinach was conventionally grown.  Interesting.

Second, all this talk about no fresh spinach has me thinking about the spinach we grew last spring at the farm.  Here's a link to Johnny's Selected Seeds "Space" variety we used.  Note the price of the packets, and then think back to the last time you bought a bag of fresh baby spinach at the grocery store.  Note that the smallest packet of seeds contains 385 seeds, and that the maturity date for the plant is a whopping 39 days!  Now, think about a spot in your yard where you can scratch up a couple of square feet of soil and plant these seeds......and think about the spinach you'll have by Halloween that you grew yourself, without any e.coli contamination whatsoever. Hmmm.....sounds like a plan.

BTW, this is the time of year to plant spinach.  Coolish weather and all.  I hadn't planned on planting any this fall for reasons too extensive to go into here, but now that I can't buy it at the store safely, I am reconsidering and might sow some leftover seeds on Saturday.

Which brings me to my third point:  when I am told by people in positions of authority that I can't have something, I want it really, really bad all the more!  So I'm craving spinach dishes. Look for a post later today with my most favorite frozen spinach recipe in it.  It's a crock-pot meal, which makes it indespensable! 

Can you stand one more light bulb post?

If so, then look at this post.  I found it while going back to Instapundit, as I do most nights before bed.  It seems as if there is an in-between option called full spectrum lighting that has a fuller, more natural light compared to the CFL's but also saves about 60% of the energy that a traditional incandescent bulb uses. 

My thought about fluorescent bulbs is the light sometimes gives me a dull headache. Plus, the type of light they produce doesn't work for close up tasks.  This FS lighting evidently addresses both of those problems, at least in the examples this woman uses in her post.

My husband and I talked about the difference in the bulbs around our house tonight and he reminded me that I have a circular CFL in my closet.  I cannot remember when we installed that bulb, but my gut tells me it's at minimum 8 years old.  I certainly haven't changed it since we put it in, and we've been in this house over nine years.  I think I'll trade out every closet bulb we have for a circular CFL.  When next they pop, the cash I'll drop.

Question to the Blog Community

Hey ya'll:

I am reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.  The information in the book is amazing to me and I am maybe a little more educated than the average bear on nutrition issues, having had a couple of college-level courses on nutrition in the process of completing the requirements for a food service management degree.

Have you read this book?  If you have, would you be so kind as to share with me a couple of pieces of information?

1.  What was the chapter or the food category that made the biggest impression on you?

2.  Did you make any changes in your diet and/or meal planning after reading the book?

3.  Do you have any stories or testimonials related to changes made after reading the book?

Anything you can and would share with me is greatly appreciated.  What I am aiming to do here personally is two-fold:  I want to make good financial stewardship decisions on how to feed my family while at the same time maximizing the health and nutrition aspects of what we eat.  I know this community of bloggers is great on stretching the food dollar within the home; I'm looking for someone who has done that using some of Mrs. Fallon's recommendations and recipes.

Thanks in advance for all your help! 

Another Online Book Sale

Shop until your fingers cramp up.  I ran across this sale at Book Closeouts dot com via one of my favorite homeschool-type blogs, the Common Room.  The Deputy Headmistress at the Common Room is even more of a book freak than I am, so when she is shopping a sale, I want to shop where she shops.

There is a feature by which you can sort by publisher, which is very neat.  There are several coffee-table type books in the back-to-school promotion that I would purchase if I had any additional room on my coffee table.  Or bookshelf.  Or that stack on my nightstand that I dust periodically.  Really.

Not much in the way of homeschool potential (at least there wasn't much I found for us) but there could be real potential for early Christmas gifts and some of the kid's selections in the Tommy Nelson section were outstanding values (like these book and cd sets of Mr. Henry bible stories that my boys love already).

Hey, when a girl runs across a deal, she's obligated to share it, right?  Among friends?  You'll do the same for me someday, I just know it.

Honey Heals

I ran across this article today and thought I would link to it here for all of you interested in a natural approach to healing.  I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv.  But I do find it very interesting that the more research gets done in the world, the more these experts find that what God created Himself works to heal us in a wholesome way.

I have a spoonful of my own honey off my own farm in my tea this morning.  It is tasty and it makes me happy.  Just so you know.  I'll be drinking it and eating it more frequently this fall to see if it has any impact on my seasonal allergies.

Next year, more beans

The market customers love them, and I love to eat them.  I am not, however, as wild about picking them.  Maybe next year the boys will be old enough to help with that. 

I have been offline for five days, which sets a record, I am certain. My brain was boiling over with blog ideas while I was picking tomatoes and berries (and beans) this week, but now that I'm in front of the screen, the brain goes blank.

So check back in on Monday to see if the brain reconnects in any meaningful way.  Hope ya'll are well.

Catching Up to Start Running Again

This is the first quiet afternoon I've had in weeks.  A fellow homeschool mom has taken the two older boys for an afternoon of swimming with her family, and the toddler son is sleeping soundly in his crib.  The silence around here is just so sweet!  I love having a house full of boys, but my boys are not the silent type.  Noise is a constant companion here.  I will start to miss them in another 30 minutes, but this moment is appreciated!

The laundry machines are humming along, trying to catch up from our dirty, dusty stint up at the farm.  For those of you new to my farm story, my family splits time between the suburbs of northwest Atlanta and our little farm in the northwest corner of Georgia, very close to Chattanooga, TN.  90 miles separate us from the large garden and the blueberry bushes that got us into this agricultural reality show.  We are in town now, enjoying friends and swimming pools and computer access.  All of those little luxuries are less frequent at the farm (except the friends part....we have friends there from church, and family, too.) 

But when the blog is quiet, it means I'm at the farm, picking beans, trellising tomatoes, whacking at the weeds, and lately, praying for rain.  If the Lord reminds you of us after reading this post, please ask Him to send us three days of slow, sweet rain.  We need it so.

I have finished another Joel Salatin book and I am making notes on what I learned most from it.  I hope to post another book review later this week.  I plan to get a library card in the farm county this week so I will have access to high speed internet and can stay more in touch with this little community of like-minded folks I so enjoy here.

Stay cool, drink some sweet tea, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

A Bold and New Frontier

No, we're not moving just yet.  But for a combination Mother's Day/Father's Day/My Birthday gift, Mike brought home a digital camera tonight.  It is charging up now and he is reading the instructions so he can then explain them to me! 

Now there will be no valid reason why I can't post pictures of what's growing, both plant and human.  We will have the equipment.  Now, where will I find the time?  Hmmm........

And no, it's not my birthday yet.  I share it with Father's Day this year.  It doesn't end in a "0" this year, either.  That was last year.  Feels good to be past it!  Except where my shoulder aches.  And when my knee does that "snap, crackle, pop" thing.  Otherwise, it's all good.  Seriously, it really IS all good.  And I am truly thankful.  Blessed be the Name of the Lord.