City Homesteading

I've decided there's no sense in waiting for "someday" to be homesteaders. Remember those books, Better Off and The Omnivore's Dilemma? They got us thinking about being as self sufficient as possible when it comes to food. Since we got a late start for a fall garden, we're limited in what we can put in, but we figured we'd put our past record of successfully growing strawberries to work for us. The result was this giant raised garden bed:

It's in an octagon shape. The outside edges are 12 feet long. The outside edges of the inner octagon are 6 feet long (the inner rings are 9 feet/side and 3 feet/side, respectively). This genius idea (it wasn't ours) allows us to set a sprinkler in the middle of the whole thing and water without standing there the whole time or keeping up many many feet of drip line. This whole bed adds up to 435 square feet of space and is currently planted with 350 strawberry plants.

These are our smaller beds:

They're 6 feet on the outside edges and there are two of them for a grand total of almost 700 square feet of growing space. Not counting the 10 fruit trees that went in this week and will hopefully be producing well in a few years.

And in other news, Sierra *really* enjoys yogurt.

Whoop!

The IBLCE posted exam results this morning (just pass/fail, the official notification, including scores, get mailed today) and I passed the exam! That means I am now an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). The pathway I followed to take the exam required me to:

Have a bachelor's degree; take background courses in sociology, psychology, human anatomy and physiology, nutrition, child development and medical terminology; spend over 2000 hours counseling families about breastfeeding issues (over 1250 of which had to be one on one sessions); and accumulate over 150 hours of continuing education specific to lactation

Once I could document all that, I was approved by the examining board to sit the exam. Unfortunately the exam is only offered once a year and this year I happened to have a baby 10 days before the exam! We all traveled to Houston, where they set up a separate room for my family to stay in and a proctor came with me every time I had to nurse to be sure I wasn't looking at notes or talking about anything breastfeeding related. While the test didn't seem terribly scary to me, I have been a tad concerned that perhaps mommy brain made me answer the questions in the wrong place on the answer sheet or something else that would've made me fail.

Shout out to Caris

Just a quick shout out to Caris. We know your birthday was 11 days ago and we have been big slackers about it. We do love you and a gift is on the way, we promise!

My Brain's Tired

A short over-view of our trash set up: We have a white trashcan for trash, and three green trashcans for recycling. The plastic and metal bin have white trashbags in them. Now, most guests we have over don't get the recycling set up and that's fine, we don't sweat it. But since Sierra lives here, we're trying to get through to her that all the bins are different (mainly so I can quit digging used kleenex out of the plastics recycling bin). So tonight she goes to throw away something and she's headed for the recycling again. This conversation follows:
Sierra: This one?
Josh: No, the trashcan
S (nodding her head): yes, this one
J: No, the white one
S: [Just looks at the green recycling bin with the white trashbag with a puzzled look on her face]
Kim: The one with the lid on it
S (looking at the trash can): oh, this one?
J: Yes, that one
S: Oh, okay (proceeds to throw away her trash)
S (while walking back to us): That made my brain tired