Garden and Home Life by Lori Seaborg

Distracted

We have a baby around here!  A literal kid...Apricot, our baby goat.

I am driven to distraction by him.  I wonder why it takes me two hours to cook dinner and why I can't get extra chores done, and why we are so off-schedule (not that we ever were on, but we always try).  Well, yeah, dinner doesn't get done quickly when I'm spending hours starting out the window at the goat pen, hoping to see a small bit of white romping around so that I know the little bundle is okay.  And chores don't get done when I tell myself I'll "just go feed the mama an apple quickly.  She probably needs it."  An hour or two later, I'm still sitting on a log, petting Apricot's head, gazing at his beautifully created blue eyes, or twirling his mama's mohair locks around my fingers. 

I just can't get enough of those two goats. 

Three days later, I still can't believe the miracle of the baby, who was born unexpectedly on the same day we lost our other precious goat, Mary, to an unknown illness.  The baby is such a gift, just as his mama, April, and her companion, Mary, were last October when they were offered to me by a complete stranger whom I met when I went to pick up something she had posted on a local recycling e-list.   By my reaction to her beautiful Angora goats, she could "just tell" I'd make a great home for the goats that she could no longer keep. 

I'm grateful for an easy-going and tolerant husband who can't resist my own blue eyes.  That's just downright useful sometimes, so I used my female charms that day to get a goat pen built by him for the goats I'd always dreamt of having. 

Most of all, I'm grateful for God who now and then gives me the desires of my heart. 

For weeks, I've been trying to get up earlier in the mornings, wanting to start my days ahead of the children.   I think I've even blogged about this struggle.  If you are having the same trouble, I have a bit of advice for you:  just get yourself a wee little billy goat, and you'll be up right at dawn, checking to see if he made it through the night just fine.  It's a pretty simple solution, really.

Lori Seaborg

A Day's Lesson

For those of you who are wondering, I'm telling you that God really does love you.  I know that in your pain you wonder if He cares.  He does truly care. I was witness to that today.    

Mary, our goat who was the gentle and sweet one, as opposed to fiesty and spunky April, passed away this evening.  She had been having some slight symptoms of I-don't-know-what over the past several days.  I thought we'd just keep a watch on her; it didn't seem too serious.  Today she was suddenly on her side, dying right before our eyes. 

I used to be in nursing school and can somewhat separate my emotions from the physical when it comes to sick things, but when I saw our sweet little girl wiping away her teary eyes when she thought I wasn't watching.....well, that was when I couldn't hold it in anymore.  And then when I went to the feed store to get a last resort effort of penicillin, and the lady behind the counter said, "I hope your goat gets better, hon," in the sweetest manner, well.....why can't people just say something rude when you're trying to hold back tears?  Saying it all nice like that makes me cry.  Right in the feed store! 

So I came home  from the feed store and paused for a chat with my husband, hoping to get a little boost of bravery from him because I haven't put a shot into something's muscle in a decade, and the last time it was an old man and is a goat different? 

As we were chatting up my courage, I heard yelling - the kind that makes a mama jump over things like high beds  - from the backyard, near the goat pen.  In panic, I fumbled with the back door and finally opened it to see our six-year-old flying up the hill and our eight-year-old shouting from the pen.  The six-year-old finally said something comprehensible: "Mama!  April laid a baby!" 

Impossibly, on the same day we were to lose our precious Mary Goat, we gained a surprise baby from April Goat.  Our children, who think goats "lay" their babies,  have named April's baby Apricot, although it is a billy goat with pure white Angora fleece.  He has lanky legs and a high-pitched bleat.  We are all, even barely-animal-tolerant Tim, absolutely in love with the little thing. 

The children and I stood in the goat pen today staring at Mary in one corner, breathing her last breath, and little Apricot in the other corner, suckling from his mama.  I said to the children, "There is a Bible verse for this day: 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

I'm going to pray for you tonight, that you see God's grace like we did today. 

God bless you,

Lori Seaborg

This photo was taken in December.  Mary is on the left. April is on the right (Apricot, the baby, was with April at this time, but we didn't know it!)

Black Gold! (Composting 101)

Composting 101 

by Lori Seaborg 

Would you like to have “Black Gold” for your garden?  Black Gold is basically just free “dirt” that is full of minerals and of a perfect texture for your plants.  It is also known as compost. Compost is easy to make, inexpensive, and odorless despite its ingredients.  

How Does Compost Work?

Composting works by little microorganisms eating away at plant or food material until it breaks down into a soil-like substance.  IÂ’m sure youÂ’ve noticed the dark black soil that you have seen under a deep pile of leaves in the forest. That is compost. 

What Materials Are Needed to Make Compost? 

All plant matter will eventually become compost, but since you donÂ’t want to wait a decade, you need any combination of the following, preferably a balance of "brown" and "green":

Brown Material (provides carbon): newspaper ( black and white pages only), brown leaves, pine straw/needles, other brown plant material

Green Material (provides nitrogen): green leaf clippings, grass clippings, other green plant material

Other Material (provides various nutrients): banana peels, fruit/veggie peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, eggshells, other garbage, hair clippings, manure from chickens, cows, horses

Do not include: Meat products, dairy products, urine/feces from
humans or your dog and cat, or weed seeds

Keep in mind that you will not have compost until the microorganisms have broken the plant and food matter into tiny bits.  To help speed the composting process, break all matter into small pieces if possible.

Where Should I Put the Compost Pile?

You can make your compost area as complicated or as simple as you prefer. Online you may find many products to buy, ranging from drums to fancy containers for your compost.  We have always gone with the free and easy method.  We have had a loose compost pile, a compost pile surrounded on three sides by recycled wooden pallets, and presently we use the chicken coop as our “compost pile.”  We just toss all compost matter into the coop, even if we know chickens wonÂ’t eat it (such as pine straw).  They are wonderful compost turners and give us rich Black Gold much quicker than if we do it ourselves. 

If you do choose to enclose your compost area, remember that the two necessary ingredients to compost are air and water, so leave your pile open at the top and with slits on the sides.

No compost pile should be more than 4' high by 4' wide, for turning purposes.

How Do I Make Compost?

Begin your pile by spreading out a layer of green material, then brown material.  Next, add some dirt to get soil microorganisms near your pile (they will find it anyway, but this speeds up the process). Keep repeating the layers. The more balanced your pile is between brown and green, the less likely that it will smell. If it does smell, make sure you have not added anything from the "Do NOT include" list above, and make sure you are keeping the pile balanced between brown and green materials.

Each time you add a layer to your compost pile, sprinkle water on the pile unless it is forecasted to rain.  Your pile should be always moist like a sponge; neither very wet nor dry. Sunlight and/or heat will cause the compost process to move along more quickly.

You need to “turn,” or stir, the compost pile since the microorganisms work from the inside to the outside. The more often you stir the pile (I use a pitchfork or let our chickens do the stirring), the more quickly your pile will be ready.

How Long Until I Have Finished Compost?

When it is summer in Florida, in the full sun, and if I am keeping the pile moist and turning it daily, I have compost ready in only about two weeks.  Most often, a compost pile is ready in 2-3 months.  Some gardeners start a pile in the fall and allow it to sit, unstirred, all winter.  It is usually ready by spring. 

There are a couple of things you can do to speed up the process:  keep the pile moist at all times, keep the pile in a warm location (sunny), and turn the pile frequently.

Your finished compost will look like the prettiest black dirt you've ever seen, and your plants will love it!

Seeds

Around here, it is time to plant our cool season vegetables:  parsley, radishes, carrots, celery, beets, onions, mustard, salad greens....

For years and years, I would buy the seeds in the little packets at garden centers or home improvement stores, and sometimes I bought seeds online or from catalogs.   But since moving to the country, I have discovered a wonderful alternative:

Feed Store Seeds!

For only a quarter (and I thought a quarter, .25, didn't buy anything these days), I can get a scoopful (close to 2 Tablespoons) of seeds.  It is much more seed than I received in the $1.99-2.99 packets.

At our feed store yesterday, along with the goat feed, chicken feed, rabbit feed, oyster shells for the chickens and mineral salt block (which tastes good, by the way; my curiosity got the best of me)....I bought mustard seeds, shallot onion bulbs, beet seeds, carrot seeds, green onion bulbs, and two other types of seed that I can't remember right now...for only $2.00 total!

There were enough seeds, along with a portion of my overflowing oregano, to share with my neighbor when she came to let her children slide down our hill with mine (No, not in the snow, Silly, this is the Gulf Coast!  We slide on cardboard boxes down the grass). 

If you have a local feed store, you may want to check them out for seeds, too.  Mine carries mostly veggies, only parsley for herbs, and lots of types of zinnias (they must have a passion for zinnias, as I do!). They also have potatoes, garlic bulbs and onion slips in season.  

You can't be as picky about the variety of vegetable (they only had two types of carrots, for example), but they do carry whatever does well in the area, so that's fine with me.  I simply want a fresh-from-the-ground carrot, never mind it's proper name!

Lori Seaborg

A New Perspective on Frugal Eating

Because of circumstances beyond our control, we are really tight this month financially. 

Like any circumstance, I can choose to look at this time as an inconvenience or a blessing. 

Of course, my natural self wants to view this time as an inconvenience, but with just a touch of curiousity and ingenuity, it becomes a blessing of a time as I lose focus on myself and start seeing what a great opportunity I've been given to make some needed changes:

Over the years, I've been wanting to start baking bread regularly, but it was just too convenient to grab a loaf at the grocery store....

....but now that I don't have a choice, I'm finding that bread baking really can fit into a busy day, and it can be easily done with the right attitude and a bit of organization.

I've been wishing that we ate healthy all the time, not just some of the time, but it was too easy to just grab fast food or convenience items because they were, well, convenient...

....but now that I can't afford fast food and convenience items, I'm able to start our entire family on a crash-diet of healthy eating.  And every is surprising me by loving it!

I've been wanting to try new recipes, but I kept falling into the same old rut of cooking the same things every day...

....but now that I have to watch our money, I am cooking more from scratch, and I am trying out new recipes to keep our menu interesting.

I've wished that I would meal plan, but since money wasn't a concern, I would just buy whatever groceries I wanted and we'd eat them whenever we wanted....

....but now that I need to watch that our food stretches for the week, I have had to make menu plans.  It is nice knowing what I am cooking ahead of time, as this helps me with time management.

It is when you have little that you realize you have quite a lot of something.

It Figures...

Does this ever happen to you?

I read on WeatherBug that there was a 70% chance of rain and thunderstorms today, so at 6:45 this morning I raced out to feed the animals in a steady rain, thinking that I may as well get the job done since it's going to rain all day......

and as soon as I got indoors, sopping wet, the rain stopped for the entire day!

Today's Chores

Today's extra chores done:

• Tim shingled the roof of the stable for the goats.
• He also shingled the roof over a portion of the chickens' aviary (75% of it is open to the air -- only one of our hens can fly that high; she prefers sleeping in a tree).
• I hauled the gifts left from the bunnies and the chickens and spread it out on my garden site. 
• We and the children picked up various bits of shingles, lumber, chicken wire, and whatever else we found misplaced in the yard (this is a result of my Decluttering Challenge -- visit my Keeping the Home blog to join in).
• We moved the two bunnies to live by the goats and chickens.  Tim attached their cage to the wall of the goats' stable.  Mary and April, the goats, were mighty curious about their new friends!
• I placed logs and a picket fence around the bottom of the rabbits' pen so my children will stay out of the bunnies' future gifts to us.  Ick!
• We cut down some green branches for our goats.  They just love palmetto branches!
• Tim cut out several more branches that are across our river (courtesy of Hurricane Ivan, September 2004).  This is a huge job but we have made such progress.
• Tim dropped his hatchet into the flowing river
• Tim dropped his big magnet when he tried to find the hatchet with it
• We froze our feet when we thought we might try to swim for the hatchet and magnet. 
• We decided that it is worth the $27 lost to not have to swim in that fridgid water, against the swift current, to try to find the lost tools. 

Wild Nature

We just spent several days in Orlando, Florida at Sea World.  Just the four kids and my parents and me.  The kids were well-spoiled by Nana and Popo, especially at the Lego Store in Downtown Disney Marketplace.  We had such a wonderful time. 

The gardens at Sea World were immaculate and beautiful. 

And now I am home...

where everything is messy and natural in my yard. 

I kind of like that.  I envy the gorgeous floating petunia baskets and the Shasta daisies of Sea World's gardens, but I also like the wild look of our land.   The pine cones litter the ground, the Southern Red Cedars have pokey and unpruned branches, the Wax Myrtles' glossy leaves on branches go this way and that......it's all wild, native, and unpruned.  A real mess, if you look at it through that lens.  Or a real beauty if you look at it through the lens of a nature lover.

For me, nature is the Great Cathedral.  It is the place where I usually talk to God, and the place where I feel His presence most often.   

~ Lori Seaborg 

also at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome

Introduction

It's my first day back online after two months of no Internet access at home.  We have had such a run of "bad luck" with our computer, that I was starting to wonder if it was a God-decision that our house be computerless.  I mean, would He really ask such a thing of me?  Well, apparently not, as just when I started to question, the computer was fixed.  Whew! 

And on Day One of having a computer, here I am creating yet another blog!  But just one more won't hurt....and on my favorite subject, too...homesteading.  Just the word gets me all happy!

I named this blog "Garden and Home Life" because that's what I'll write on, and because I am launching a new website at http://www.GardenandHomeLife.com for you to visit in the future (you can go there now, but there isn't much on it yet, thanks to my broken computer!). 

As an introduction, I'll let you know who our family is in the way of homesteading:  Two years ago this month, we moved from a lot in a small city to an acre next to a wooded acre on a river (fishable and canoeable).  Our house sits at the very front of the acre, so we have most of the land available to us in the rear of the house. 

There, we have the river at the far end.  It is clear and moves lazily-yet-steadily.  An otter family leaves just upstream from our riverfront.  Along the river is a pure white sand (90% silica) beach.  We live in the Emerald Coast area of the Florida-Alabama Gulf Coast, so we get to enjoy such perfect sand at the  beach, and now here on this riverfront.  Thanks to Hurricane Ivan last year, we have a very large beach of sand (and the river is now deeper). 

Near the beach is our chicken pen.  I prefer to call it our Aviary, as we have an open-air pen for our chickens.  With our warm weather year-round, we don't have to have a hen "house."  The chickens perch on some logs that fell during the various hurricanes and tropical storms we've had this past year.  The lay eggs on a shelf made of chicken wire onto which we lay pine straw.  We have about 13 chickens continually residing in this pen, and about 7-8 that run loose.  We have 2 roosters, so we let one be the outside king and one rules the Aviary. 

Adjoining the chicken pen is our goat pen.  I prefer to call their roofed area the Stable.  Again, because of our subtropical weather, the goats do not have a normal goat house.  They just have a roofed area to get out of the rain.  Their fence is mostly made of natural logs that we found in the wooded acre next to ours after the hurricanes.  It makes for a very pretty fence and was absolutely free except for the nails which we already had on hand.  Mary and April are two Angora goat does.  I just love these dolls!

Closer to the house is the organic vegetable/fruit garden, the citrus trees (Lemon, tangerine, and Kumquat), the Bay tree, azaleas, and a bulb garden.  Right next to the house, outside of the laundry room door, off of the kitchen, is the organic herb garden where rosemary and oregano currently reside.  In pots, I also have thyme and lemon grass and aloe vera. 

The rabbits cage - I call it the .... well, I don't have a great name for it yet, maybe the Hutch, but it's really just a cage to be honest ... is right up near the house for now.  Soon, they will go live in the goat pen (still in their Hutch), so they can enjoy some company with the goats and chickens.  The rabbits are Californians, kept strictly for their cuteness and their droppings which make my plants grow beyond imagination.

A disclaimer:  All of the above sounds so grand in writing, but it's really nothing more than you could rig up, too.  

My plan for this blog is to post photos and write how-to articles and lessons learned.  If any of you are not homesteading, I encourage you to start.  You can start right now, even in a city apartment.  I'll help you learn how from my limited knowledge as best I can.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Lori Seaborg

(also of the Keeping the Home blog )