Life is never dull, that is for sure!

They started developing the road and the properties that are adjacent to our house.  This has resulted in a lot more people coming around our property.

One morning, I went out to milk, and I was startled when three fat pigs jumped out at my in the dark!  They weren’t in their pen.  I was baffled how it happened because both the gates were closed to the pig pen and there were no holes or breaks in or under the fence.  I put them in and chalked it up to weirdness.

Two days later, the pigs were out.  Jared and I managed to get them in and then they ran out the other gate.  Somehow, the back gate to the pen was open!  Jared and I were even more baffled.  Neither of us had opened the gate.  The kids can’t reach and there is no possible way the pigs could get up and pull up the latch that opens the gate to swing out.  I tried jiggling and shaking it and there is no way the pigs could have gotten it open.

Fast forward to the end of the week, and this has happened a total of four times.

My only conclusion at this point is that someone is coming up onto our property and opening the gates to our animals and “setting them free.”

It’s an interesting prank to be sure, maybe even funny once or twice,  Pigs cause a lot of trouble when they are loose, especially when they are reaching the 200 pound mark.  They got in and ate 50 dollars worth of chicken feed, they tore up the hay, etc.

I finally broke down and came to the conclusion that I need to file a police report and I went and spent a pretty penny on padlocks for all our gates and animal pens, but come on, REALLY!?!?

January starts a new year, and since it falls in the dead of winter, it gives me an awful lot of time to think about how I can challenge myself to grow.  I make it a point every year to sit down and find a way to come up with something special and exciting that I can do to improve myself or my world.  I think it is human nature for us to like the idea of a new year being a new start, a chance to right all our wrongs and move on in a better light.

This year, I was led in an unexpected direction.  I decided that I no longer want to depend on the grocery store for my source of food.  Yes, I could just decide to “only go to the store when I absolutely need it” but that is just the kind of wording that would have me a month later saying that of course the chocolate I so desperately want qualifies as necessary.

I decided that we were going to try banning visits to the grocery store for the month of January.  This also means no bakery, no Saturday market, no eating out, no outside food provisions allowed at all, period (ok, except for the CSA from our local organic vegetable farmers).

I considered the idea impossible and crazy until I really started to look at it and think about it, and it suddenly seemed to be an interesting and exciting challenge.  The effects have been very interesting and very positive so far.

Money- Our grocery food budget is one of the largest items in our family budget.  As a family of four, there is nothing wrong with that, but what if we could find a way to eat well and reduce our food costs at the same time.

Time- I usually go to the grocery store two times a week, that’s eight times a month.  Since I’m the primary care taker for our two children, that means I would have to bring the kids with me.  We’d have to buckle and unbuckle two kids from the car, fight over who goes where in the shopping cart, explain why we are not buying candy, stop the baby from stepping on the food, etc.  All of this is gone.  The time I used to spend fighting to shop, buy and bag our food is now time I’m spending doing a fun activity with the kids.

Eating down the pantry- I make a LOT of food from scratch, which means that we have a pretty considerable dry food storage.  In many cases, we have 25-50 pounds of different grains, beans etc.  These are the raw foods that start almost every meal.  A little bit goes a long way, and as I was looking at these foods, I was realizing that we could and should eat through our current stores  so that they can be replaced with the fresh beans and grains of the upcoming year.

Our freezer was full to the brim, even overflowing at the beginning of January.  There was home-grown chicken, rabbit, beef and venison (shot on our property).  I used to try to “save” the meat for a special time and it would never get eaten.  Now, we’ve been eating down our stores so that we can fill our freezer again with the upcoming animal harvests.

I also spent a considerable amount of time canning fruits and vegetables during the fall harvest.  The truth is that we have been happily eating like kings from the stores that we have.

Some people care a lot about buying organic, locally grown ingredients for their pantries.  I’ve realized that it is just a natural part of my life.  I’d venture to say that about 90% of the foods we are eating have been harvested within a 20 mile radius of my house.  Even more so, 80% of that food was either raised or picked and processed by the kids an I.

I must also say that having a cow in milk is also very helpful.  We are rolling in milk, cream, butter, cheese, whey, etc.  There is nothing like a bit of raw dairy product to add richness to a meal.

Being creative in the kitchen- This project has led me in some interesting directions in the kitchen.  Since I am not able to bring in new provisions, this has required me to make some thing I would never consider making.  I wanted to get around to using some of the miso we had in the fridge.  I started craving miso soup, but we didn’t have any tofu.  Rather that decide to try to make something else or do without, I got out my organic soybeans and my computer and I learned how to make tofu.  You know what, I am so proud of myself for doing it too.  That’s just the kind of growing I’ve been talking about.  I will never buy tofu again.

Being thankful- The month is quickly drawing to a close, it sounds like it has been easy.  Well, there have been some drawbacks.  I ran out of coca powder on about day 2, and well, you can imagine the torture that has been.  Jared is graciously living without raisins and we’ve got no honey in the house for my tea.  I also ran out of butter at some point and had to figure out how to live without until I could get the cream together to make more.  I do have a list of provisions that we need to stock up on eventually.

I’m learning to navigate around the little bumps along the way and to do without in some cases.  During the times that I find I am really missing something, I just consider myself lucky.  We live in country where we have what we need at our fingertips, and there is assistance if we are unfortunate enough to not be able to pay.  There are so many people in this world that do no have the same access to the beautiful foods that I get to cook and experience every day, and I’m just so darned thankful, that I think I just might make it the rest of the month without coca powder.

I hope that this little experiment makes me a better chef, mother, farmer and homesteader.  I’m more determined to produce more of the food products that our family needs.  I’m also resolved to buy the products that I can’t make myself from another farmer like me who cares, who has a relationship with their plants and animals and who puts my health over making a profit.  Win-Win-WIN!

Life is full of choices.

Some choices are easy, most are hard. It’s impossible to forsee the consequences or benefits of what you choose. The only possibility is to make a choice, jump in with both feet and enjoy or tolerate the ride.

Yep, it was totally my idea to put the four tons of hay on the floor of the barn. It seemed like a good enough place to put it. It would be in a location that it could be used and it was nice and warm, inside, covered and dry. The person I bought it from even delivered it and stacked it for me, yep, right where I told him to. We’d had pallets laying around, but it was silly to try to use them they’d just be in the way. All it took was 6 inches of rain in a 24 hour period for me to learn that those pallets DID have a use and that the decision to put the hay in that exact location was a losing decision.

And so, rather than write off my losses, I had to set the worst example for my children and overreact. Rather than put them in their snug beds, I thought it would be good to drag them out into the barn in the rain and the cold so that we could milk the cow and “save the hay.” Of course, this just resulted in some grumpy kids and a grumpy mom that ended up yelling at the kids. So I failed to get the cows and the goats milked, I failed as a mom and we still didn’t save the hay. Was that a sign to give up, nope. I sent the kids off to bed and decided that I would single handedly move 4 tons of wet hay to another wet location in the barn. With tears in my eyes, determination in my heart and a single hay hook in my hand, I started off to do that. One and a half tons of hay later, I’ve dragged everything through the water and I’m tired as all heck. I dig the hay hook into a bale and haul with all my might to pull it off the stack. Instead of the bale moving, the hay hook tore out of the bale and I fell backwards off the stack of hay into 3 inches of soggy wet water. I lay there crying, wet, injured and sobered. It was only then that I realized that sometimes you just have to give up and walk away. Some things are just not worth it.

I grew up on a farm and farming always seemed easy and simple to me. My family had already had a generations’ experience in farming, so maybe that helped, but I remember life on the farm being plesant. I’m sure there were difficulties and that I was mostly protected from them, but it still seemed simple. Fast forward twenty years, and I was dreaming about having a place of my own. Funny how farming seems lovely and romantic until you are actually out there DOING it. In my daydreams, it was always a nice sunny 70 degrees, the sun was warm and there was plenty of green grass. Of course I seemed to skip the parts about frozen water buckets, flooded barns, lost crops or a sick animals. These are all hard things, and choosing the path to take when you encounter them is the key to success.

Even though I’ve been around farming my whole life, I’ve never been the one to call the shots. I was never at the helm making the decisions, I was always a crew mate happily spending time with the animals. It’s different now, and I’m finding the entire weight of decision making on my shoulders. It’s a lot different to call the shots and have to live with the consequences that those decisions bring about.

The rain is still coming down, and there is more expected tomorrow. I think the best thing to do at this point is to call the wet 1.5 tons of hay lost and try to make up the money to replace it somehwere else on the farm. It’s much easier to enjoy the rain as I listen to it in my bed intersperesed by the breaths of my sweet baby boy. Sometimes the right decision is to decide not to react, to keep a light heart and to walk away.

And though I’ve made this sound all difficult and tough, it is. That still doesn’t mean I’d rather be doing anything else. I face challenges every day, just like anyone else who is alive. I still couldn’t find anything more satisfying to spend my time on.

Goodnight for now.