Posted in The Homestead

We had such a nice, busy weekend.

I bought some wool on Saturday to make a little baby hat for a friend having her first baby in the USA in a couple of months. I love it when I get to knit for friends in the Northern Hemisphere in a season where I normally would not be knitting. All the wool is on sale because we are coming to the end of our winter.

I also found some lovely glass bottles with stoppers at Freedom Furniture for $4 each. I plan on making Leanne's ginger beer this summer for the family. I only got three bottles this time, which will not go very far in this household, so maybe every week I can get a few more.

I started sewing Meredith's dress for my brother's wedding on Saturday afternoon while the children played outside, and Robin mowed the lawns - having to mow the lawns for the first time this winter is a sure sign that things are warming up! It was freezing cold with a bitter wind outside and I dug up the last of the potatoes for a roast dinner. The new potatoes will be going in soon.

Yesterday, we went into town for our church service and Meredith got stung by a bee while playing outside. It flew right down inside her dress and stung her on her chest. We didn't have any antihistamine at home, so we ran into the shopping mall where the pharmacy is and bought some. They were so nice in there - got her a little drink of water and cut the pill in half for her. She is not allergic to bee stings, but she comes up in big welts when she gets bit by any sort of bug - mosquito, sandfly, bees. It's still quite red and sore this morning, so we'll keep an eye on it.

In the afternoon, our lovely neighbours popped over to look at our hens. They got hens the same day as us and have been getting 3 eggs every day. Ours haven't laid yet, but we're expecting it any day. They've been ruffling up the straw in their nesting boxes.

My neighbour is a vegetarian - she used to be vegan before she met her husband (who is a meat lover), so she's relaxed it a little bit, but I was telling her that we are thinking of trying vegetarian meals this summer to save money on meat which incredibly (in this land flowing with milk and honey and meat), is skyrocketing. So she bought over 3 recipe books for me to look at, and there are some yummy-sounding salads and things in there. If we can feed ourselves this summer, and just put as much of my husband's income onto our mortgage, all the better. If that means going without meat, we'll do it. Of course, we will treat ourselves to a big fat turkey at Christmas. She was telling me that you have to take Brewers Yeast (I think that was what she said) to give Vit. B12 which will suit me fine. I remember as a child having to take a Brewer's Yeast drink to combat hayfever, and as I can't take hayfever medication while pregnant, this should help.

I have absolutely no idea really about how to cook with variety on a vegetarian menu - a bit like my gardening skills really - so I'm quite keen to learn a new way.

My neighbour also told me that she and her cousin (who lives a couple of roads away) are interested in doing a type of co-op vegetable planting and would I be interested? Would I ever!! This is something I would love to do and had thought of but didn't know how to go about getting other people into it. It would mean that each of us would mass plant something (say pumpkins), and when they were ready to harvest, share it with each other, and they would do the same with something else. I actually read about a community in the USA doing this in the old days in an old Country Woman magazine and have been running it over in my head since then about how I could get something like that started. So I hope it gets up and going.

It's a beautiful Spring morning here today, so I must get into our school work so we can go outside and enjoy the sunshine later on. I am feeling so much better these days. The nausea is only really intermittant and I have started taking a pregnancy vitamin again, and I'm wondering if that is helping keep my energy levels up.

Robin got the new job he applied for and starts in two weeks time. We are not looking forward to him going back to a 9-5 job, but it will be nice to have a regular income coming in for awhile until we can get our business up and running. So I have two weeks with him at home to get some odd jobs done before he's gone during the day. It will be a huge change for us all, especially Theodore who, at 3 years old, doesn't know anything different. Some women don't like having their husbands at home all day, but I have really enjoyed it and I'm not looking forward to the change of him being gone all day again. But, hopefully it is only for a season.