Kraut!

We have been successful in creating sauerkraut! Since neither of us has ever eaten (much less made) homemade sauerkraut, Josh took a jar of it to the German post-doc in his lab and she smelled and tasted it and says it is indeed sauerkraut. Yay us!

Our potato plants have finally put up sprouts that are visible above the hay. If they all keep it up, we will have a freezer full of potatoes au gratin, mashed potatoes, twice baked potatoes, potato soup, hashbrowns.... We planted something like 44 sections of potato and I've read online about potato yields anywhere from 4 to 12 potatoes per plant. There's the potential for A LOT of potatoes out there.


We are steadily planting seedlings. Here's the "before" picture of how barren the garden looks. In a few months I'll take another picture of everything all grown up and we can marvel at the difference ;-)

If you live in town and want lettuce, let me know. We have more than we could possibly eat. Mostly romaine and a curly leaf variety with a little bit of spinach left.



We have determined which chicken has come out on top in the pecking order. We finally settled on the name Sheba--as in "queen of sheba", though I'm still campaigning for "She-ra". Even in their bigger box, she continues to shake a tail feather in the face of confinement.

Being a flock animal, she always jumps back in and chirps bloody murder if she falls out (this has only happened when the dog ran in there barking at her). And the chickens are moving out of the ugly teenage phase and looking mostly feathered lately.


And last but not least, the latest diapers I've made for Sedona--these are 4x8x4 infant prefolds :-)

Gah

One more week of work, and since I'm part-time now, that means three more days. Apparently this quitting work plan came along a week too late, Sierra is on spring break this week, so we've had to work-in child care---she's spending monday and wednesday with me, tuesday with veronica, thursday with brandie and friday with josh. Today she made it until about 9:30 before she came up to me (I had let her sit down to watch shrek while I put Sedona down for a nap) and said, "momma, can we do work at home? numbers work?" At school they call their activities "work", so what she really meant was she wanted to do school stuff. Last week we went to barnes and noble and we let her pick out a book, then on the way out the door she saw the rack of workbooks and got ALL excited and practically shouted, "workbooks! we can get workbooks!!" She is definitely my child. I remember begging for workbooks. Her other new thing is puzzles. She did her first (24 piece) one thursday night and finished a 100 piece one tonight with just a little help. Wonder if they have puzzles at the library?

We heard back from Sedona's extended metabolic screen and it was all negative, so that's good news. Her digestive issues are also better--no more blood in her stool and no more constipation issues (that started when she started solids), though she has to eat a jar of prunes and a jar of peaches each day to keep that up. Her weight gain is still very mediocre. She's on another losing streak lately and if you look back over several months she's averaging 6 oz of gain per month. That's not enough to maintain a growth curve, so she just keeps on tracking down. She's getting close to the 25th now, when we started all this, she was at the 90th. The 25th would be just fine and fit in well with our family (genetically speaking), if she maintained it. I keep waiting for her to level out and start following a curve, but it's been 5 months and isn't happening. Since the blood has stopped though, we're back in the big gray area of weighing benefits vs. risks of more tests. The GI backed off doing a scope b/c right now the benefits don't out weigh the risks. If everything else holds steady, we won't be doing anything else until she's closer to the 5th percentile (which will be around her 1st birthday if she keeps gaining 6 oz/month). Her next GI appointment is in April.

As an FYI, powdered buttermilk works great for biscuits, but you do it a little different---mix the powder in with the dry ingredients, cut your shortening in, then just add the appropriate amount of water. And when you sew a bunch of flannel and fleece stuff, clean your sewing machine. My MIL told me that when she gave me the machine and I did clean, or so I thought. The weird noises tonight and repeated tension problems (to the point of snapping needles in half fairly regularly) forced me to dig out the owners manual--I learned to take off the stitch plate and....oops. Way too much fleece lint jam packed in there. Ugh. Lesson learned, now I know better.

Why are we in this hand basket...

...and why is it so hot in here?

Remember my new season of falltering? It continues to drag on. It snowed this morning. Big fat snowflakes. Lots of snowflakes. hours worth of Snowflakes. In Texas. In March. The forecast says we'll hit the 80's (again, we did last week too) by next weekend. Yup, our world's weather patterns are just jim dandy and normal...move along, nothing to see here.

And I found out I'm not the only one scoffing at the rise in flour prices. Apparently there really is a wheat shortage going on. Hmmm.... I've heard the debate go both ways on whether ethanol is really partly to blame (not being a fan of ethanol myself and being a big opponent of the corn industry, I'm gonna lean towards evil corn messing up my wheat supply). Alas, I don't think I'm quite self-sufficient enough to grow, harvest and mill my own wheat. Hrmph. Give me a few more years.

I should know by now that any time a child is quiet and not bothering you, *something* is going on. Really, I've had 3.5 years of experience, I should have picked up on this.


And it never gets old watching babies pretzel themselves up so they can try to eat their own toes.

Long time no write

It's been a busy busy week.

Serious stuff---I quit my job. Yay! Sanity is more important than money any day and it was beyond time to make this move. I have been offered the opportunity to be a back up teacher for a local hospital (for newborn, childbirth and breastfeeding classes) and my first two classes went quite well, with very good reviews from the students, so hopefully more of that comes my way. I'm going to talk to the other hospital in town (that currently offers none of those classes :-o ) about teaching over there too. I'm just waiting for CAPPA to send me a copy of my childbirth educator certificate b/c it seems to have disappeared when we moved. We will be pinching pennies even more than normal for the next year or so until Josh finishes his PhD, but of course we sat down and looked at our budget before making this decision and we think it will work out. This will also afford me the opportunity to take full advantage of the day to complete gardening/canning/preserving tasks---and becoming proficient at that stuff is a LARGE part of our long term goals.

More fun stuff---the winter harvest is just about over. My brussels sprouts are sad sad little plants. They made gorgeous sprouts and then it got warm and the sprouts opened up. Then it got cold and the plant shot up and added more sprouts, then it got warm....ah, you get the picture. We didn't get anything from them. The cabbage all got turned into sauerkraut (well, it's fermenting as we speak...it needs another week or so before it's sauerkraut). And the carrots......I have pictures to show you of the carrots. Here's Sierra showing off what happens when a carrot hits a clod of dirt:


And here's a japanese imperial carrot that did not hit a dirt clod. These things are so long I'm pretty sure the grew all the way to the bottom of the raised beds and into the soil below!!


One tray on the dehydrator full of carrots (we ended up drying 6 trays worth, about 1/3 of the carrots are still outside in the ground)

And that same tray the next morning:

Carrots dehydrate down to nothing, which is great--a garden full of carrots can be condensed down to a couple quart freezer bags. Then through out the year, whenever I make any kind of soup, I just throw in a handful of dried carrots and they plump right up!

One chicken has decided she is the queen of the roost. She demonstrates this by shaking a tail feather in the face of confinement:


She never explored the room, just perched up there and then got back in the tub. We decided it was time for a bigger (less escapable) enclosure anyway though. The chickens also got to spend the day outside in the coop. It's still not totally done, but it holds them just fine for the moment (they won't move outside full time for a few more weeks). Here's a few pictures of the coop:



And the chickens enjoying the nice weather today;