Rocky Mountain High

Spring...

2011-04-16T11:17:00.003-07:00

No gardening for me this spring :( Luckily my aunt has one so I can get my gardening fix vicariously. And meanwhile, I can read about gardening zones and daydream about what I will grow when I get a chance.

I use these three maps to find my gardening zone. The first two links probably won't help you if you don't live in Arizona, but the last link is on a site that I believe has interactive USDA Gardening and Plant Hardiness Zone Maps for other states. You just have to go to this part of the website and type in your zip code, or click on your state (there's a list on the left).

The Food Safety Modernization Act

2010-12-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Lawyers and such swear up and down that S.501 ("The Food Safety Modernization Act") won't affect anyone's small farm or backyard garden. Psh, how's this?

It all starts with a farmer named Roscoe Filburn, a modest farmer who grew wheat in his own back yard in order to feed his chickens.

One day, a U.S. government official showed up at his farm. Noting that Filburn was growing a lot of wheat, this government official determined that Filburn was growing too much wheat and ordered Filburn to destroy his wheat crops and pay a large fine to the federal government.

The year was 1940, you see. And through a highly protectionist policy, the federal government had decided to artificially drive up the prices of wheat by limiting the amount of wheat that could be grown on any given acre. This is all part of Big Government's "infinite wisdom" of trying to somehow improve prosperity by destroying food and impairing economic productivity. (Be wary any time the government says it's going to "solve problems" for you.)

The federal government, of course, claims authority over all commerce (even when such claims are blatantly in violation of the limitations placed upon government by the Constitution). But Roscoe Filburn wasn't selling his wheat to anyone. Thus, he was not engaged in interstate commerce. He wasn't growing wheat as something to use for commerce at all, in fact. He was simply growing wheat in his back yard and feeding it to his chickens. That's not commerce. That's just growing your own food.

Read more...

If you can control the food supply, you can control the people. It's like NAIS, only with plants.

Today is September 11.

2010-09-11T01:15:00.005-07:00

Nine years ago today I was nine years old and I lived in a Green Apartment. It would be five months before we moved from to Utah. Some people flew planes into buildings and I didn't know why it was a big deal.

I first heard the news when my ride to school came that day. My friend's father said someone had purposely crashed an airplane into the Pentagon. I didn't know what "the Pentagon" was (what did a shape have to do with anything?) but it the way he said it, I knew it was important, so I tried to look very serious and pretended I knew what he was talking about.

When we got to school, we didn't do very much in my 4th/5th grade class. Mostly people talked about how surprising it was that someone would do this (do what? I wanted to know. Why were these building more special than any other news story?). The teacher turned on the TV in our classroom and kept it on the news all day. Eventually I understood at least a little.

I leave you with a tribute. Please keep in your thoughts today all those who lost their lives, families, friends, and peace of mind that day. Let us not forget.

And Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Blogging....

2010-08-31T15:48:00.000-07:00

I'd intended to blog more with my phone, but there were so many limitations, I gave up after the first entry. Now, though, my sister and I have a laptop and internet, so I can get back to my usual chatty self and catch up on my blogroll.

We've finally moved, so now here we are in Southern Arizona (the picture to the left is from down the street) living in campers in my Aunt's backyard. It's good to be away from my Evil Stepfather and all the reasons we left, but I miss everyone I left behind like crazy! Also, as the seasons start changing to fall, I'm missing the chill in the air, the smell of smoke from everyone's woodstoves, the leaves changing color, harvesting the garden, and all the fun I have with my friends in the winter (everyone travels a lot in the summer, so we're rarely all home at once), and when winter comes this year, I'll miss the snow.

Here, the climate is a lot different. In October there, you can look forward to frost and leaves on the ground. Here, October is when the weather becomes perfect, not too hot, not too cold. There, you have cold weather and four seasons. Here, you've got two seasons: unbearably hot and temperate. The leaves don't fall off until December and spring comes in February. And it snows something like once every five years.

Ironically enough, it's a lot greener here, even though technically this is the desert, not there. Thing is, here is a "major agricultural center" kind of thing, located in a river valley, while where I used to live is more of a "gateway to the nat'l parks" thing. In closing, here's a slideshow of my new home.

We Don't Have Internet Anymore

2010-03-19T19:56:00.001-07:00

...but my cell has internet so it's ok. I didn't think I could cuz of how lo-tech the browser is but here I am!

Right now I'm at this multi-level marketing party thing where they sell tacky home decor. I'm here but I don't like it. If you go and watch "The Story of Stuff" (it's in my sidebar), you'll understand why I'm so danged irritated. People come here, they buy the dishes, candle holders, framed pictures, baskets, potpourri, statuettes...all of it tacky and overpriced; none of them worth the unsustainable practices they support. It's not that I don't understand buying things that aren't earth-friendly, it's that I don't understand paying so much for things you don't need, won't last, aren't pleasing to the eye, and will just end up in some landfill somewhere.

It epitomizes everything I hate about the consumer society we live in. You should buy it cuz you need it, not cuz it appeals to your inner shopaholic!!! Grrr!

How to Decide Where to Live in the Country

2010-02-02T06:03:00.003-07:00

So, I'm researching desirable places to live in Colorado. I had a very scientific method (*snort snort*) if you'd like to try it yourself:

Go through your four back issues of Country Magazine and that book you have, A Year in the Country, 2nd Editon. Very Good. Now, whenever you see somewhere you like the looks of, write down the name of the town. If it's a nat'l park or something, get out your atlas and find a nearby town. If you like, only write down names of placesin a particular region. Like, I only wrote down the places in the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountain states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado).
You should have a nice, list of about twenty five various places by this time. My list included: Jackson, Wyoming. Telluride, Colorado. Noxon, Montana. Silverton, Colorado. Bozeman, Montana. Winston, Oregon. Chattaroy, Washington. Yampa, Colorado. Belgrade, Montana. Alsea, Oregon, Montrose, Colorado. Monument, Colorado. And several more. At this point I could see I had a definite preference for Colorado scenery, so I made a new list of the Colorado locations only.
I definitely wanted to live in the Rockies, so I got out my big Rand McNally 2010 Road Atlas (you can usually also get maps of states for free from the states' tourist site, Colorado's is here). Next, I looked at the index of towns in the back and all the towns farther over than column 14 (just past Denver's longitude) got crossed off. I now had a list of about ten towns which I listed in alphabetical order on a page in my notebook I have where I write all the details of my homesteading plans. I wrote down the Rand McNally coordinates (you can find those by looking up the towns in the index in the back). Then I went on City-Data.com and found the county, population, elevation, and temperature average for each location and wrote that down next to each town.
That's when I noticed this handy little link on City-Data's home page: Small Towns. If you follow the link, you will be taken to a list of all fifty states. Click on whichever state you wish. Naturally, I picked Colorado. I was now at a page with fairly long list of all the towns in Colorado with less than 1,000 residents and a map with pins on it showing their location. I copy and pasted the entire list into a blank Notepad document. Then, I used the index in my Atlas to take all the towns off the list that were farther over than column 14. There were a few towns that weren't in the Atlas. Those I left on there to look at later.
I decided to take the elimination process a step further and cross off all the towns that were farther over than column ten (in other words, keeping only the towns on the left page). Then, I went to the map on City-Data where the list of small towns were and invented my own coordinates for the towns not on the map. Mountain Village, CO--for example--is not on the Atlas or found in the index. It's coordinates are K-6 (row K, column 6). Rico, CO was on the atlas but not in the index (also located in K-6).
Temperature came next. Using the information found on City-Data, I crossed off all the towns whose average temperature at the hottest time of the year (usually July) was less than 60 degrees or so got marked off. Then, I got rid of all the towns that I felt were too close to Denver. At this point, the entire list (a culmination of the previous steps) was down to twenty-seven. I decided this was enough. You may wish to continue narrowing down. If so, you can use any of the following criteria: county/state, snowfall, sunshine, precipitation, distance from major metropolitan areas, proximity to houses of worship, population, taxes, laws, average age, employment opportunities average income, schools, grocery stores, etc. Most of that info can be found on the City-Data page or one of City-Data's forums.
Once your list is as short as you wish, open a word processing or similar document and type in the following categories on the first line: Name, Population, Rand McNally Atlas coordinate (I shortened it to just "RMcN"), Temperature at different times of the year, County, and any other details that are important to you. Now type in your list of towns and their information in each of your chosen categories (one town per line is how I organized mine). Now it's time to decide which category to sort your list by. Mine was originally sorted by name, but I decided that temperature was most important and so I sorted that way. The quickest way to do that is to highlight your list and click the button that makes it a bulleted list. Then, use the bullet toolbar to move each bullet point up and down the list as desired. You can highlight the list and click the bullet button again to remove the bullets if you don't want them there later.

You now have a fine list of different areas to check out. You don't have to visit them all in person (especially if your list has about twenty-five places on it like mine does). Start by trawling the internet. Read its page on City-Data and the forums on City-Data that it's mentioned in. Google the town's name in quotes (ie, "Crawford, CO"). Request tourist info (to look at the pretty pictures). Read the state, county and town websites (if they exist). Find out about building codes and remodeling codes (did you know Cheyenne County in Colorado doesn't have building codes? Think of all the different alternative buildings you could construct without worrying about convincing Planning & Zoning!). Check out climate maps and gardening zones. Look for population maps and county maps. Read the Wikipedia entry for the state, county, and town, then visit all the relevant links in the article.

You are, of course probably looking for rural land, so use the town as a jumping-off point to find an area that suits you best. You're not really looking for the town, so much as the area. Google search the name of your town and "real estate" (ie, Pagosa Springs, CO real estate). Look through the listings. You don't have to be looking seriously. The point of this exercise is to get a feel for the land before you spend money to go scout it out. Real estate listings will reveal what kind of land is available, the going rate for the different kinds, and (best of all) it will probably provide pictures of the place which are always so much fun, but also give you a good visual of the area. Note things like what kind of vegetation grows there, is it too cold for deciduous trees?

Go on GoogleMaps and find the town on there. With this tool, you can look at traffic, road maps only, the terrain and road map together (it's called "Satellite"), and under "More" there's photos, videos, Wikipedia, webcams, etc so you can see the land from more than just a bird's-eye view. Another favorite of mine is "Terrain." With this filter, you can see a map of the terrain and if you zoom in to a certain level, the different elevations are labeled to about every 1,000 feet. This way, it's easy to tell the location you're viewing is in a valley, on a mountain, in the midst of flatland, etc and how high above sea level it is.

This is fun, whether or not you're seriously looking for a place to live or just daydreaming about "someday." After all this internet exploring, you'll probably be able to narrow down the area to just a few places. I have found that area I like best is Southwest Colorado, specifically the area that includes Delta County, Gunnison County, and Hinsdale County.

Blah, Blah, Blah

2010-02-02T01:34:00.003-07:00

Wow, that last post was looong. But I think I stayed on topic for that most part, so it's all good. Our plans at this point are so up-in-the-air at this point that we don't even know what we're doing. So far we've come up with the following locations:

Southeastern AZ (where my acre is located)
St George, UT
Spokane,WA/Coeur d'Alene, ID
Tacoma, WA (where a cousin of my mother's lives)
And Rural Colorado. But I think that at this point it's kind of one of those castles in the air that Louisa May Alcott frequently referred to in her books. Ooooh! A pertaining quote!

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
--Henry David Thoreau

Of course my vote is all for Colorado (except I did mention once that I thought we should move to Romania). Right now what we're doing is hoping and praying. Tomorrow my mom is going to call about some rentals in St. George, UT since that's the closest and therefore most feasible of the five.

But enough with the Realism already lol. I've been researching a lot of places and even considered other places outside of Colorado, but I keep coming back to Colorado. The more I research, the better I like it. Why? Well, it's fairly natural disaster-free: it's not particularly earthquake prone, no tsunamis or Hurricanes (since it's nowhere near any oceans), it's mountainous and therefore tornadoes are unlikely. Also, out of all the states, it is the only state where all of it is above 3,281 feet. Its lowest point (where the Arikaree River flows into Kansas) is the highest of all the states low points: 3,315 feet.

It's amazing the things you can learn from Wikipedia.

Of course Colorado has the Rocky Mountains which naturally makes it my favorite (shhh, don't tell her that Idaho and Wyoming and Montana do, too!). There are points against it of course: Daylight Savings Time is one big one. Arizona doesn't have that and that's one thing I really like about it. Also, it gets really cold in some places. Cold doesn't necessarily = bad thing, but cold + short growing season does = bad thing. Greenhouses are a solution, but having all your gardens and orchards in greenhouses just seems...sad...

Also, the testing part of the homeschooling laws are just dumb (Arizona and Idaho don't have homeschool student testing). I do see the upside to testing (making sure that the children are actually learning), but, in my mind at least, the downside is worse. You see, if you're homeschooling your child because they're doing poorly in school, then if they don't improve enough to pass that year's testing then back to school they go. There are ways around this evaluation (like having a teacher who's a family friend come in and do it in a non-testing way), but it's still a drawback. On the brighter side, they don't require school/teacher supervision for the actual schooling part.

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-01-12T15:14:00.004-07:00

I'm eighteen.

Yay!

So Is This My Lucky Day...Life...Place?

2010-01-07T20:30:00.001-07:00

Things have been strange today. Everything has been exactly right for me. A lot of it are just little things like just as I reached the corner and pushed the button for the crosswalk, it immediately turned to "WALK" as soon as I pushed the button. Or at the buffet we went to for lunch today and as soon as I finished my last bite of food, the waitress would be right there to take my plate away.

Then, when we went out to the car, my door was unlocked even though all the doors had been automatically locked. Or yesterday when my little sister and I went on a walk and just happened to walk behind the motel just as my mother opened the door to see if we were out there because the pizza had just come. And today when my little sister and I went on another walk, they called my cell and I didn't hear, but we walked into the motel parking lot just as they'd gotten in the car to go get ice cream.

The whole time we've been down here, everything has just been working out to perfection. It just makes me want to be here that much more because it feels like my lucky year. The last few years have kinda sucked in a really bad way, but they're getting so much better!

So, Here We Are

2010-01-07T19:22:00.003-07:00

We're here in Southern Arizona. I'm using my mom's laptop and the free wi-fi to blog. It's kind of nice. I keep meaning to save up the money for a laptop of my own, but $500 will take some time to save. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

Today we went out to my lot and looked it over. I actually like it quite a bit (I was kind of dreading what might have happened to it). The neighbors were squatting on it for awhile, but then they sold their property to one of their younger sons (unlike his parents and other siblings -- whom we knew when we lived there -- he's quite nice) and so he's clearing the junk cars his brother and father were keeping on both lots. He and his girlfriend (or whoever she is) are living in one of the towns (all the towns are right next to each other like one big coterie of small farming towns lol) until their property and trailer are fixed up.

Next, we went into the nearest town of the group (population: 2,165) and talked to the post office about mail. Then, we headed over to the County Seat (the biggest of the group of towns; population? 9,823) to talk with Planning and Zoning about building on the property. Right now, the property has nothing on it. It's just 1.08 acres with a sort of Mesquite Tree Forest. :)

My property is located in a "flood plain" so our house will have to be raised pretty high off the ground. The neighbors' trailer had to be three feet off the ground so they brought in dirt and only raised the trailer, itself, about eighteen inches off of the ground. Also, we have to figure out water and power. We'd like a well, but water out here is hard to find. The guy at the Health Department (where we went next) recommended looking at hydrology maps. As for power, we thought we might try solar. The solar company in town (SunPumps) had a deal where you could get huge rebates. Like, there were two people at Planning and Zoning who put in solar systems. One (who was an old schoolteacher of mine back when I was in 4th-5th grade) put in a $14,000 system and got about half her money back. The other one was a man who put in a $65,000 system in at his ranch. After the rebates, it cost him less than $10,000.

IDK if the rebates are still going on or not, but it's something for us to look into. The power is in across the street so it'd probably cost us $7,100 for the electric company to bring it over to our property. The solar system might be cheaper. And as for water, the last time we lived here, the water companies had water available in the upper and lower neighborhoods, but not in the neighborhood we were in.

Also, because my mother plans to have the divorce finished in February (if my Evil Stepfather doesn't drag it out), we'll need a place to live. The plan we've got is to install the septic system, then bring our travel trailers down to live in, and get a car to haul water. Then we could live in the trailers while building. We'll have to get a $100 permit to put the trailers there.

Money to build is, of course, an issue since we have to bring in an engineer to tell us how high our house will have to be off the ground and that sort of thing. On the bright side, the Building Inspector is open to alternative building materials. He said that if we brought in something he'd never heard of, then he would research it to see if he thought it was up to code. If he couldn't find enough to satisfy him, then if we brought in an engineer's stamped statement saying that the idea would work, then he would approve it.

We are thinking strawbale specifically because it gets really hot down here and plenty of insulation combined with the correct combination of the right kind of roof and windows in the right places should make it pretty simple to cool (heating is not a big deal; passive solar will be enough most of the year because of how nice the climate is in fall and winter).

Of course my mom is trying to find any excuse not to move down here. When we moved away almost eight years ago, I don't think she ever intended to come back here. I don't know what her problem is. I mean, this place is my home; a lot of my family is here (on my father's side) and has been here for ages. The property I own is a small part of the land that his family used to ranch until they decided to subdivide it. The lot I have was in trust with my father.

I never quite understand my mother. Our personalities are so different. I go through life being me, sometimes a little bit more fiery and dangerous. I rarely if ever care what people think of me and I'll stand up to anyone. Fear is not my nature.

My mother, on the other hand, is very timid. She can be outgoing and is willing to talk to strangers, but when it comes to just being herself, it scares her. What people think of her always weighs in heavily. Even when she does do something different than what people tell her, she agonizes over it the whole time. She'll tell me "I don't want to [do such and such]." And I'll say "then don't." I have to remind her that there are no laws that says everyone in the whole world is her boss.

Meanwhile, I want to get down here. I think the traveling around would be fun, but not for more than a year tops and not right now when the only home we've got is tainted by the horrible man that lives there (although he's been spending most of his time in Texas the past two years, thanks to God!) and I want to have some time to heal emotionally before we take on something so draining as traveling everywhere. Plus, I want to start college in the fall and that isn't possible if I'm everywhere. For college, being down here is best because we'd be less than 20 min from the cheapest two year college in the state.

So it's better logically, but for her, it's not any good emotionally. Whatever. :P

On another subject, I really need to stop researching the world.

2010-01-05T21:14:00.001-07:00

At this point, I'll never find just "one" place to live when I decide to find a "Forever Place." You see, I've always loved Arizona, especially southeastern AZ where I was born and live for the first 10 years of my life. It's a pretty laid-back state. It's hot, but I've never minded and in October, the temperature is perfect. And best of all, I like that there's NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!

Then there's Colorado. I like the Rockies. I like clear mountain air. I like how cozy and comfortable it feels to be so far inland. I like mountains and snow and pines and wilderness and the harsh, cold, rugged beauty the Rockies possess.

Well, that was hard enough to choose, but then what do I do? I go and start researching the Olympic Peninsula, specifically Clallam and Jefferson Counties. This just makes it that much more difficult, especially when I start reading up on that area on City Data. Why? Because the way the people there talk, it sounds brilliant. There's rain all the time and the ocean and there are also MOUNTAINS (IDK if I've said this before or not, but I can't stand living without my mountains. In Southern AZ there are the Gila Mountains, in CO there are the Rockies) where I can go if I want more than a half inch of snow at a time. Their economy is almost non-existent and best of all, there are few people (AKA, "seclusion," something I like better than anything in a home).

Washington State sounds so marvelous, with a few exceptions. It's far away from my family in the extreme sense. It's close to the ocean which is good and also bad because it doesn't feel as safe as the tops of the mountains in the middle of the country does. Also, I have no idea what the laws are or what kinds of alternative energy are best for the area (if the area is usually cloudy, then that rules out solar energy...or does it? and what about wind? and if neither are good, then what else is there?). Also, in the winter the days are a lot shorter than out here where I live because they're farther North.

The only solution is to combine all my favorite parts of my favorite states....but that's impossible and mutually exclusive. Like, how do you get the sun of the southwest and the overcast weather of the northern Olympic Peninsula? That's just one example. You also can't have the ocean and still be hundreds (or even thousands) of miles from it.

I guess the only solution is either to keep looking for place that's a good compromise (Idaho? But the name is so weird!!) or else to visit them and continue researching until I find the place that feels like home the most. I suppose ultimately it doesn't matter where on God's earth I go to homestead, so long as I find a pleasing bit of land free of the issues rural land sometimes comes with (clearcut land anyone?) and where it is legal for me to even have chickens and other farm-type animals.

But still....when I choose some place to stay for a long time or maybe ever, I want it to be a place that will make me happy. And that has pleasing weather. That's why I like Washington. Weeding is so much fun in the rain (or in the early morning after a rainstorm). But then that's where I come into the Rockies because the beauty there is so much different than Washington's...which -- in its turn -- is vastly different from the beauty you find in Arizona...and you can't really have all three at the same time....

I Bet You Thought I Was Never Coming Back...

2010-01-05T20:26:00.003-07:00

...Well I have to admit, I wondered that too. Mi vida loca has gotten more loca and less vida and I wondered if I'd ever really have anything to put on this blog that would be worth it. I found a couple of recipes that I thought I might post. One I can probably post soon, but the other is written in a notebook that's packed up cuz we're moving.

We aren't sure yet where we're going. Right now we live near the Grand Canyon but we're considering moving to the other side of AZ. Also, my mother and I were talking today. We've been kinda worried about "where to live," cuz we can't really find anywhere to go. I do own a piece of property (many hours from where we live now) that we are planning on moving to. In fact, we're leaving tomorrow for a three day trip to see about setting things up down there. The problem we're having is mainly that my orthodontist is up here and I still have about another year's worth of braces to go.

But, back to the subject at hand. We were talking about all that and then the thought occurred to me. Who says we have to have "a place to park our bodies" (that's what my mom calls it)? Who says we have to live in a living place? Not that I'm against it as someday I want to have a Forever House -- a place I live for so long as I live...but who says we have to live in a house right now? I graduated last spring and my brother and sister are both registered for homeschool.

So I brought it up. At first we were just talking about doing this in the "oh wouldn't that be interesting to do in an alternate universe" way, but then I thought, why couldn't we do this now? Why couldn't we figure out something to live out of (like a four door truck with a camper shell or a van or another vehicle pulling one of our travel trailers behind) and then spend the next year or more (depending on how we like it) driving across the country visiting everywhere and coming back once a month (to check the mail and for my orthodontist appointments)?

My mother is from the hippie generation and thinks it sounds perfectly reasonable. My sister is all for it; she wants to visit all fifty states and this seems perfect to her. My brother says he doesn't want to be a "hobo." I bet I can talk him into at least trying it, though.

The only thing leftover is for me to think it through and make sure that I really do think it's a good idea. I think it would be best to try it for a limited time first and then decide if we wanted to keep it up, because I don't know if I really would like never having a solid home.

Wow, I've Been Gone a LONG Time!

2009-11-27T14:52:00.002-07:00

Things have been crazy recently. Since the beginning of October, to be exact. That's when my dad died (heart attack). Meanwhile, my mother and stepfather's marriage is going down the drain and he blames me. And now we're moving, but to who knows where...so my posts will probably be very sporadic for awhile until things settle down again.

On a brighter note, I'm ordering some books off of Amazon.

One is "Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home" by Alex Wilson because someday I want to build my own house (whether I actually build it or hire a contractor or some combination of the two...) and I want it to be healthy and made of natural stuff and as chemical free as possible.

I'm also ordering "Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life" by John Ivanko. I really like reading about how other people do this homesteading which is one reason I do the blogging thing. Partly because I like to offer my opinion on everything and also because I want to hear how other people do it.

I already have "Storey's Basic Country Skills," "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Carla Emery, "The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It" by John Seymour, and "Country Wisdom and Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land."

Anywayz, so I'm excited to get lovely new books :)

P.S. I put a Christmas music player at the bottom of the page.

So I Googled Myself...

2009-10-13T10:36:00.002-07:00

First I did just my first and last name, in quotes of course. None of the results on the first page were of me. I didn't look through all 6,440 results, or even any of the pages past the first one to see if any of them were talking about me. I decided I'd better become famous so that ALL of the results on the first page would be about me.

So then I Googled my first name, middle name, and last name all in quotes. Every one of the 92 results was about me. Mostly MySpace, Elfwood, and FreedomGen stuff. Then I searched the images for myself. All of the images were related to me. One was actually of me, the others were pictures I'd commented on at Elfwood.

I thought it was pretty cool. :)

Shudder Shudder

2009-08-05T16:08:00.004-07:00

There are only a very few animals I wish either did not exist or would be extinct already. Snakes are not on the list. As much as they creep me out, they have their uses and generally don't bother you if you don't bother them. And then there are mice. I don't much mind them and anyways the cats keep them away. Flies are annoying and I consider them totally useless, but they don't really hurt anything. And so on.

At the moment, scorpions are on the top of my list of Creatures That Should be Exterminated. Why, you ask? Well, I was just sitting here minding my own business when I felt something scuttle up the front of my leg, so naturally I grabbed it (I'm wearing jeans, so I couldn't see what it was), then I twisted my pant leg around it and with the other hand lifted up my pant leg to see what I had. I saw a little stinger sticking out so I thought maybe it was a wasp and I was worried that when I dropped it out, it would try to come back and sting me, so I squished it as much as I could and then dropped it out...and it was a scorpion.

I had managed to squish it enough that it couldn't walk so it laid there with legs on the side moving. And I just sat and stared at it, until my mother came in and I pointed it out and she finished the squishing and wiped it off the floor. Uck.

Now all I can think is "How did it get inside my pant leg?" (since I lean back in the chair so that my feet don't touch the floor--or barely brush it--when I'm sitting in it) and "Please don't let that ever happen again!" and "At least it didn't sting me."

I'm still shuddering and every time a fly lands on my shoulder, I twitch. D:

Where This All Began

2009-07-20T06:09:00.006-07:00

I woke up early this morning! I went to bed at about 1:30 am and then this morning at about 5:15 am I woke up. I considered going back to sleep but decided I wanted to stay awake. And now here I am an hour later, blogging.

When I was little, we lived on a ranch in Southeastern Arizona. Originally we lived in the antique-pioneer house. It was adobe and the ceiling in the living room was gone. My dad has always been a pack rat so one of my earlier memories are of a little trail through the living room to the woodstove in the back corner. My mother tried many times while they were still married to de-junk it and make more space for living. She also tried to make it more livable and prettier since it is, and always has, been falling apart.

My dad still dreams of buying the ranch (he owns a small share of it) and renovating what we now call "the old house," but he has never really done anything and probably never will.

When I was a few months shy of my second birthday, we moved to Salt Lake City for awhile where my sister was born (exactly one week after my birthday, ironically). Then we went and lived with my grandma for awhile. My mother refused to move back unless my dad got something better to live in. He found a trailer. The house was bigger (but not really living standard without some work and money that we didn't have), but the trailer was better.

I liked living on that ranch. We had a garden, dogs, goats, and horses. The neighbors (the only other inhabitants of the ranch) had the same as well as cattle and chickens. My best friend (she was born a few weeks before I was and was the daughter/granddaughter of said neighbors) roamed everywhere. We played in the creek when it ran in early spring (from off of Graham Mountain) and in the hot summer we would run barefoot from shade spot to shade spot (since we went barefoot almost year round due to the short, mild winters).

There was an outhouse off to the side and back of the yard which we never used because for some reason bees lived there (no idea why...). My dad's kids from his second marriage would come to visit and of course my best friend and I would follow my older sister and her friend (my friend's aunt) everywhere which of course annoyed them no end.

I loved it when we got to bring the baby goats in the house (for whatever reason) and feed them milk from calf bottles and following my dad around as he did the "chores." (Feeding the animals, watering the garden, milking, straining the milk, etc.) When there was a day when we butchered, I would go inside and sit under the cooler where I couldn't hear anything. Then when it was over, I would come out and watch my dad chop up the goat (hung from an obliging mesquite tree) into tasty bits of chevron.

I remember one night when I was three or four, my dad was going to go out to the outhouse to get honey from the bees and I wanted to come with. He didn't want to take me, so he told me that the bogeyman would get me. I knew he was teasing, but even if I hadn't I wouldn't have been afraid (my idea of the bogeyman: man in all black wearing a ladybug suit). I insisted so he took me with him (the bees were all asleep, I think), so he finally gave in and we came back with lots of tasty honey.

When I was almost seven, my mom decided she was fed up with my dad and moved out. We moved to a less secluded (the ranch was miles from any kind of neighbor and I loved it) place with two acres and a trailer. From then on out, all the places we've lived, we've never had much more than a garden, a few cats and the occasional dog. So I would pretend. When I was younger I would go out to bring home the (imaginary) cows with my imaginary older siblings (I'm the oldest of my mom's kids) and ride my bike pretending it was a horse. My sister wanted to play Barbies. I wanted to play Farm.

When I got older, we moved to Northern Arizona and when it snowed, I'd go and check on my pretend farm animals to make sure they were safe from the snow. I wanted to plant a garden but I never could remember to water anything I planted and when I wanted to do more than plant a seed and water it once or twice, I had no idea where to start anyways. I devoured the Mother's Children section of the Mother Earth News (we have years of back issues).

After I got to be 12 or 13, I kind of forgot about it all until just before my sixteenth birthday when I started looking at our old Mother Earth News issues. That's when I decided "that's what I want to do." And when I ran out of issues, I decided I wanted to see if there was anything on the internet. I googled all sorts of phrases containing the words "country," "farm" and "rural," but I never found anything until I googled "homesteading." That's when I found Homestead.org and A Homesteading Neophyte. I was so excited when I discovered people still do this and that, even better, they blog about it.

And after reading through two or three blogs, I discoverd that no one ever really started blogging until after they'd been doing what they were doing for awhile or they bought property. I wanted to know about it from before all that. So I decided to write my own blog. And here it is. :)

How to Make Pasta/Pizza Sauce

2009-07-19T21:00:00.003-07:00

I frequently make pasta and pizza. It's very good although no one else in my family has quite the same taste for it as I. They'll eat the spaghetti and they're fans of homemade pizza, but the only thing Italian-food-wise that they like as much as I do is Lasagna (due to the rarity because of how much more work it is) and macaroni or penne or rotini and cheese melted in and then topped with the sauce I make (rather than pasta and sauce topped with cheese like most people do).

I have tried many different recipes in my search for so-called perfection (I'm a great deal pickier about my cooking than anyone else). Finally, after plenty of experience, I invented my own recipe. It's dreadfully simple, once I ironed out the "wrinkles."

Ingredients:

40 fluid ounces of tomato sauce
29.5 fluid ounces tomatos in puree
3 Tablespoons Italian seasoning
salt to taste (1/8- 1/4 teaspoon)
onion to taste (one medium onion or 1/8-1/4 cup dried)
and garlic to taste (as few as 3-5 cloves, as many as an entire head, or 1/8 cup dried)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.
Simmer, stirring frequently, until the flavors "blend" together.
I usually just turn the burner on high and figure it's done when it boils. If I need it to stay warm longer, I'll just turn the heat all the way down and leave it until I need it. As a general rule, you can simmer it from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Be careful; you can cook it so long the flavor disappears.

Makes enough for one pound of pasta and up to two pizzas.

High Mountain Musing

2009-07-19T20:16:00.005-07:00

Generally when I go looking for a new blog to read, I either use a previously bookmarked blog or else start at one person's blog and then go through their blogrolls until something catches my eye. I found this one the first time in that way, but then there was this thing where the computer got turned off before I could get a chance to read it or bookmark it or anything. But I didn't care much since it was one of many blogs I had been looking through and although I planned to find it again someday (because of how she lives in Colorado--where I want to live), I was just whatever about it.

Then I was reading some articles on Homestead.org and came across this article and this one, both written by the same author. I thought "maybe she has more writing somewhere else on the internet." So naturally I googled her name to see. And that's when I found her blog for the second time. When I saw the faintly familiar page loading in my browser, I was sooo surprised. I figured this meant I had to read it this time. No excuses.

So I did.

Even though I'd sworn off reading Wordpress blogs because their archives seemed senseless to me.

Somehow I managed to figure out how to navigate her archives and I was very happy with what I found. Gin Getz's blog is amazing. She and her husband and son live high in the Rockies of Southwestern Colorado at an altitude of over 10,000 feet (that's about two miles above sea level; imagine standing there and looking down two miles to the sea!) where people normally only visit in the summer because of the heavy snows. Their mild summer lasts only a few weeks in the middle of the year. They run a guest ranch among other things. They have lots of horses, some Highland Cattle, chickens, a few cats, a dog and I'm not sure what all else.

They have solar power, gas power and a wood cookstove because they're too far away for normal electricity. Their water is gravity-fed.

She's a poet in several ways: Her blog posts are interspersed with freestyle poems she and her son write. She always includes plenty of pictures so we, too, can share the beauty of her mountain home. And I love her writing style. Even when she's not posting poetry, her blog entries are written in poetic form, celebrating the beauty she lives in the middle of.

I think that if John Denver's song (which my blog is named after) "Rocky Mountain High" had a blog that defined what he was trying to say, "High Mountain Musing" would be it.

If you don't already read it, go and read it now. It's great!

P.S. She also writes another blog that is strictly horse stories that I haven't yet read through yet. But feel free to beat me to it and read "High Mountain Horse Blog."

My Garden is Coming Along Nicely

2009-07-19T16:07:00.005-07:00

So my mothers camera (aka high megapixel camera) is still "missing." BUT my sister's red one was available. So I took some pictures of the plants in my garden.

This is my melon. I forget what kind of melon it is. I had three or four kinds, planted two, and one survived. But which of the four did I plant and which of the two survived?
These are my onions. Some were red onions and some were walking onions. I just can't tell which are which is all. But hey tasty onions are tasty onions, no?
This is my parsley plant. The picture is blurry because the wind was blowing when I took it and the camera is not good at taking non-blurry pics unless the subject and the camera are held very still before, during, and for a few seconds after you press the button to take the picture. So I took two pictures. Neither is particularly clear, but hey, I tried.
This is the larger of my two Calendulas. I have decided that Calendulas are one of my favorites to grow because they grow fast. When I started the various plants inside, they were the biggest of the baby plants. Of course now the beans are bigger....
These are some of my bush beans. I have a huge amount. I didn't expect them to grow when I threw a bunch of beans out into my garden, but they grew anyways. Only problem? My mother (who gave me the beans to plant) has no idea what kind she gave me. Thus, more mystery plants. :)
There aren't any pictures of the mint because mint like cool and wet and the temporary drought (due to my whole forgetting-to-water-thing) didn't do them any favors. So one of the nine or seven or however many I planted is still alive, but very yellow-and-crinkly-like-to-die

I didn't get any pictures of the cake, either (due to the MIA cameras), so we just ate it. It isn't hard to picture it. A 13x9 inch Devil's Food Cake with thick chocolate frosting all over it and then in green gel frosting, it said "Happy 17th Birthday, Froggy!" He was very pleased we remembered his birthday.

It's really stormy out now (my preferred gardening weather), so I'm thinking I'll go out to weed. I usually only pull up the prickly/thorny weeds (tumbleweed and such) and then any of the others I leave there, so long as they're not crowding out anything I planted.

Uh Oh, I'm Waxing Philosophical! Jon always said I was a sage with mad chicken-cooking skills...

2009-07-18T20:13:00.005-07:00

My sister lost the camera. No pictures of my lovely garden (that I have now nearly killed twice due to neglecting to water, but that's a tale for another day). :*(

I've been feeling very philosophical today. You see, way back when I was a freshman (did I ever bother to mention that I graduated in May?), I had a wonderful science teacher. That year we did Physical Science, and during one of the lectures, he talked about time, what it was, if it was, how it related to science, etc. As I did every other afternoon, I thought about that day's science class. And that was when I decided I didn't believe in time as anything more than an idea that helps us to make sense of our world.

Today, I have returned to those thoughts. Occasionally, I will stop being in my head and come out and be. I just sit or stand or whatever and I clear my head of all my thoughts and just think about the moment. There's a poem I remember:

I have only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it,
Forced upon me, can't refuse it,
Didn't seek it, didn't choose it,
But it's up to me to use it;
I must suffer if I lose it,
Give account if I abuse it;
Just a tiny little minute
But eternity is in it.
--Author Unknown

Nothing sums up a moment of just sitting a being who or what you are better than that. Because for real, all we have is ourselves, our choices, and now. There isn't really a past or a future, or at least not one we can actually get to from here. We must learn from the past and prepare for the future, but we can only live well if we live now.

It's kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around what I'm trying to say because when you're here and now and not thinking of anything else, it's hard to be there. We keep trying to jump into what we should be doing and what we shouldn't have done that now is the furthest thing from our minds.

But now is all we have to work with.

Oh, and One More Thing...

2009-07-17T14:54:00.003-07:00

So my mom came back from town with my tickets. One of my guy friends and I are going to a Lady Antebellum concert on the 22nd, and I'm excited. I'm not sure who else is coming with us. I think one other friend for sure, but that's all I know of.

When I water the garden I half expect the ground to start sizzling like a frying pan does when you flick water on it. It wasn't hot at all until mid-July (about a week ago). We just used the cooler for the first time three or four days ago.

Can I just say that having 75F weather here is incredibly strange? So now that it's getting into the 100F's it's much more normal if incredibly HOT.

I finished the cake. I'll post pictures later when I get some. It's beautiful ha ha. I wanted to draw a frog, but I didn't have enough of the green gel frosting stuff. Not that there was much room for it, but still...

I'll also post pictures of some of what is growing in my little garden later.

This Time I Really Did Want to Blog

2009-07-17T14:39:00.003-07:00

I was on my normal don't-feel-like-blogging but then the keyboard just stopped working. Again. So there was a week or so when I wanted to blog but couldn't because of the whole thing where keys "U," "Y," "M," "W," "C," "J," and a few mutinous others were refusing to do their job. That is, put a letter down when they were pressed. I still managed to chat with friends on Facebook between our two broken keyboards and the on-screen keyboard. But it was slow going and now that we have a new keyboard, I'm reminded that now I can write my thoughts almost as fast as they come.

On of my friends is turning seventeen on Sunday, so I'm baking a tasty chocolate cake for him that I'll bring to tonight's movie night. It's all chocolate chocolate chocolate, luckily when I asked him if he liked chocolate cake (AFTER buying the ingredients, mind you) he said "duh," so I was relieved. He doesn't like green, but the letters are still going to be green because green is like frogs (and also looks good with brown), and his nickname is "Froggy."

Hopefully this cake will survive to be eaten. In January my group of friends threw me (and another guy whose birthday is three days before mine) a birthday party. One of the cakes never got to be eaten. Instead, Frank started a cake fight and then we ended up sticking candles into a stick of butter and decorating the butter with sprinkles and then having him blow those candles out (along with mine since I kind of disappeared when they decided to sing happy birthday).

But Frank isn't coming so she won't have the opportunity to throw cake and I don't think it will occur to anyone else. :P

Next, I'm going out to the garden to water, weed, and take pictures (okay so it's 100F in the shade and 85F indoors...still...) :P

The Simple Life

2009-06-19T19:03:00.004-07:00

I've been on a blogging kick lately, but fear not! After a bit I won't feel like blogging and you won't hear from me for weeks, and just when you think I've died, I'll post three entries an hour for a week straight! :P

Anyways, so I found another blog, worthy of mention in this lovely jabber-fest that is my blog LOL. It's called "The Simple Life" and it is written by a lady named ~Tonia (ever wonder why all the blogs I read are written by women? I actually don't know if it's a man or a woman who posts on ehagart, but that doesn't count).

When I read blogs, I generally start from Entry #1, and then read my way forward, a month at a time. When I first start reading The Simple Life, they were living on a farm they managed. Now, though, they're moving to a place of their own that (acreage-wise) is a bit smaller. In the family there's Tonia, her hubby, her three daughters (the younger two are twins). They mainly have goats and chickens.

My favorite thing about the blog are all the pictures she posts.

NAIS Petition

2009-06-19T18:16:00.002-07:00

I dug up a petition on the web that's against NAIS. If you want to sign it, you can find it here.

I'm number 3,022.

Leave your signature number in the comment section below, if you like.

Thusday Thirteen: Things I Like

2009-06-18T22:34:00.004-07:00

1. Dark Green. Like forest, alive green.

2. Stormy weather. There's just something about overcast days that are just magical.

3. Animals. Fuzzballs and featherballs alike. They're so adorable...and amusing.

4. Plants. They're so alive and comforting and nourishing...and extremely good company.

5. Cooking. I like to cook. I don't know why. I mean, we all need to eat, but I don't cook to eat, I cook to cook.

6. Ever After. It's a movie starring Drew Barrymore. I've watched it over and over and over dozens of times. I like that she's not a helpless Damsel-In-Distress like other Cinderellas. I like that she can stand on her own two feet. And I like best the scenes of her doing different farm chores at the Manor: slopping the pigs, getting honey from the bee skeps, gathering apples, truffle-hunting, etc...and the scene where she goes swimming in the lake.

7. Holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, the Solstices and Equinoxes, my birthday. Christmas is so magical. I love Christmas lights.

8. The seasons. I love the flower sprouting and the new life of spring, the green and business of summer, the leaves changing and the harvest of fall, and I love the snow and the magic of winter.

9. New Age Music. The haunting melodies of Enya and Loreena McKennit in particular. (I also really like Blackmore's Night and Josh Groban, but I don't think they're considered New Age at all.)

10. Woodstoves and Fireplaces. There is something about heating with wood and building fires that mesmerizes me.

11. Clothing from the Past. Specifically dresses like those Candice Night wears when performing and these (which are costumes, I know):

12. Books. You can read about any subject, learn anything, visit any world.

13. Mountains. Specifically the wild ones. Trees everywhere, wildlife on your doorstep, miles without a single human soul -- this is my idea of paradise.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

American Way Farm

2009-06-18T13:25:00.003-07:00

I found yet another blog. I have found a bunch of blogs that are only a few months older than mine. Because of that, I have under a year's worth of blog entries and I can catch up in a day. Of course if I wanted, I could just read the ones on the front page, but I think that you miss so much that way.

This new one is called American Way Farm. It's written by Sandy, who lives in New Hampshire with her husband and grandson and a menagerie of animals. The main reason I started reading was because they use LGDs (Livestock Guardian Dogs) and the other blogs I read don't have any of that. But that's not the only reason I read it. It's also very interesting.

Mexican Sugar Cookies

2009-06-18T09:55:00.023-07:00

So way back in January-ish February, I discovered a recipe for "Mexican Sugar Cookies." They were very good so I made a batch and carefully took pictures. Then there was a huge mess with the camera and I didn't want to post the recipe until I could get the pictures. Well, I finally have the pictures. Yay!

Mexican Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup oil
2 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups sugar, divided
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl combine oil, eggs, and vanilla. Beat together until well blended:
Add 1 cup sugar. Beat until smooth:
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix it all together (In this batch I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour. You can make the cookies with all white or all wheat. If it's all white, then you don't cook them as long and they get bigger than if there's wheat flour in it or if it's all wheat):
Add flour mixture to oil mixture. Stir until a soft dough forms:
In a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon:
Take teaspoonfuls of dough and roll into balls. Roll balls in cinnamon mixture:
Grease a cookie sheet. Place balls on cookie sheet.
Flatten cookies with the bottom of a glass dipped in cinnamon mixture. Bake until bottoms are lightly browned (4-6 min if all white flour. Longer if you use any whole wheat flour).
Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Store in a cookie tin. It's supposed to make about 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

Enjoy with hot chocolate and a good book!
:)

Sucking Eggs

2009-06-18T09:36:00.003-07:00

I found the strangest thing in my garden yesterday afternoon. It's a tiny little egg, not much bigger than a quarter. There's a tiny little crack thing in it and it appears that the insides have been sucked out. I found it near this hole in my garden that I think is from some sort of animal. I'm just not sure what kind of animal it is. I wonder if the animal is an egg-sucker of some sort? What kind of animals suck eggs anyways?

This is a picture. It's kind of fuzzy because the camera doesn't do close-ups very well ever since the flash broke, but it's okay. The round, flat, gray object is a quarter to show the size. And fuzz or no fuzz, the little dent where the egg got sucked out is a little bit visible. It's on the right half of the egg; kind of at the top.

Rant. No Need to Read.

2009-06-17T20:06:00.004-07:00

Warning: Rant follows

There is really very little that pisses me off, but those things that do are big. I have always heard that we don't own the world, we borrow it from our children. I'm down with that. It makes a lot of sense. I try to live my life so as to leave an inheritance to my children and grandchildren that includes a clean world, a government in its proper role, and every other good thing that I can leave them.....well, at least the things that matter.

What bothers me are those who forget about the future and live their lives in such a way that there will be nothing left for future generations. The worst is, I'm not sure there will be anything left when I come of age. How am I supposed to use my lifetime to improve the world if I have to fix it because of the terrible things my parents' and grandparents' generations have done to it? I'm not trying to blame anyone, it just makes me so mad that people are tearing the world apart without a second thought to their children and grandchildren who will have to lie in the bed their forefathers made?

Lets take this issue a bit at a time. First there is the environment in general. Where I live, people dump their garbage, not at the landfill (which is bad enough), but on BLM and privately owned land that has been kept wild. The roads are littered with garbage, mainly beer cans and plastic...although I once found poker chips. Some of us try to clean the roads near our homes, but as long as others continue to throw trash out their windows, there will be no solutions.

We, as a nation, continue to live narrow-minded consumer life with consumer tunnel vision. I can rant all day about this, but I have found other places that say it better. The first is The Story of Stuff. It's a documentary about where our stuff comes and where it goes when we have finished with it. It's a bit on the long side (around twenty minutes, if I remember correctly), but worth every minute. You can click on the link in the sidebar, or you can find it here. The other source is an article by Sherri Dixon called "Drawing a Circle in the Sand." You can find it here.

The next item on the agenda for this rant is NAIS. I have been reading blogs on her for awhile, and I have heard it mentioned on many of the different blogger communities I frequent. On one such blog, I found this article. It just makes me mad all over again. The worst is, I won't be old enough to vote until January because I'm only seventeen. I can raise awareness by talking about it and I can sign petitions, but should a law ever come around in the next few months needing voting on, I can't and it makes me feel helpless. At the very least, the article did cheer me up a little when it mentioned that Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and Kentucky have already made some laws to hinder/outlaw it on a state level. That leaves only forty-six states that need to follow suit. :\ Here are some helpful sites on the subject:

And then there's government. We are a republic. The purpose of a republic is to guarantee the basic rights. We seem to have forgotten the proper role of government. Couldn't we have learned anything from Rome? This video explains everything better than I can:

And this video kinda sums up the political rant:

The thing that bothers me most, I guess, is that on one side we have the people who want to live better, preserve freedom, take care of the earth, etc, and on the other side we have the people who don't know or care what happens to those left behind after they die.

That's all I have to say for the moment

Snowbound Farms

2009-06-17T14:20:00.003-07:00

I have found another wonderful blog. It hasn't been up for long, but I'm definitely hooked. It's called "Snowbound Farms Blog" and it's written by Christina. She lives in Northern Maine with her two boys, baby girl, and husband. They're just starting out with the homesteading project (they bought their 165 acre farm in March of last year). So far they have chickens, and they have a garden. Due to the chillycoldness of their climate, it's a constant battle to keep their plants alive and kicking. But they manage quite well.

They also have a website, Snowbound Farms. It tells about who they are, what they're doing, etc. My favorite part is the Photo Gallery page. Especially the chicken album (and quite possibly all the others, too lol).

I Made Bread

2009-06-17T12:57:00.008-07:00

I haven't been on in ages. But maybe that's a good thing. It means I have more to tell.

My garden this year has turned out to be kind of small. I have 2 Calendulas, 1 Parsley, 8 (0r was it 9?) onions, a plant that is either a melon of some kind or Armenian Cucumber, and a huge patch of beans. Yesterday I also planted nine mint starts. They're not exactly edible mint (they're eau de parfum kinda thing), but my reasons for planting them were a) mint is invasive so it should crowd out the other, prickly, thorny, sticker-y weeds; b) to till under at the end of the growing season to compost during winter and improve the soil; c) to add more green to my patch of ground.

We haven't had a full day of sun since March/April -ish. The temperature never hits above the late seventies. I'm not complaining. It's more pleasant to weed with rain sprinkling on your head than the sun beating down on your back and making you sweat for it.

It's very strange, though. We usually never have temperatures under 90-95 -ish.

I made bread for the first time on my own the other day. As usually occurs with my cooking, my family loved it and gobbled it down, but I was more picky. It had a nice taste, but it was too heavy and I'm pretty sure yeast hates me. I nearly never get it to rise right. The only time I ever got it to work like it should was with a Swedish sweetbread I made one Christmas season; Swedish Kardemummakrans (the main problem with the Swedish bread is how fast it get stale. It has to be eaten within a day or two of baking).

I think the main problem with my bread I just made was in the rising. It calls for letting it rise once and then putting it into the loaf pans to let it rise one more time before baking. I was thinking I would try either letting it rise longer or else having it rise twice before I put it into the pans to rise. The other thing is, it called for hot water to mix with the flour before adding the yeast, and I use boiling water. So maybe cooler water, as well. I also plan on using that trick where you put a wet dishtowel over the bowl of dough while it rises.

This is the recipe I used:

Whole-Wheat Bread

Ingredients:

3 Tablespoons yeast
1/2 cup warm water
5 cups hot water
7 cups whole-wheat flour
2/3 cup creamed honey
2/3 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons salt
6 cups whole wheat flour

In small bowl dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine hot water and 7 cups whole wheat flour. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon (or mixer) until smooth. Add 4 cups whole-wheat flour. Mix well. Let stand for 15 minutes; then turn dough out onto a floured board and knead in 1 to 2 cups wheat flour--enough to form a smiith, elastic dough.
Put dough into a greased bowl; cover. Let stand in a warm place for at least 30 minutes or until double in bulk. Turn onto a greased board and divide into 4 equal portions. FOrm loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Let rise until double in bulk. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes. Bake 15 minutes longer if you like your bread crusty.

I have also found the camera cord for the better (read: twice as many megapixels) camera. Now I can start posting pictures! :)

ETA: The texture and flavor (aside from the heaviness) is quite good. The bread is soft just like the store bought stuff and I have had no such problems with it being too crumbly. If I can get the rising part right, this recipe's a keeper.

How to Make No-Bake Cookies

2009-05-23T17:58:00.004-07:00

Last summer, my mother and stepfather went back east for a vacation. He is originally from New Hampshire, so they went to visit his children as well as see all sorts of sights. They started here and went through Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Ohio on their way there. In Deer Trail, Colorado, they picked up a cookbook. I was feeling like cookies one day, but I didn't want to bake them. I wanted them NOW! So I used that recipe and amended it.

You will need:

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup peanut butter
3 cups oatmeal
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Directions: In a saucepan, combine butter, sugar, and milk. Bring to a boil. Boil for a minute or two. remove from heat. Stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon onto waxed paper. Let cool. Enjoy!

I didn't add 1/2 a banana or 2 Tablespoons cocoa because we didn't have either one. And then I put a dozen onto wax paper and decided to eat it out of the pan. I didn't eat all of it, so some of it cooled in the pan. It was good warm, better after having been cooled...but if you let it cool and then eat it in cookie form, it's best of all.

Another time I added the banana but it made the cookies squishy longer, so I'm not going to do that anymore. It makes 2 and 1/2 dozen cookies if you don't eat the dough first! (It's very tasty, but if you wait for them to cool, it's so worth it, I promise!)

How to Make Tamales

2009-05-23T15:31:00.014-07:00

You will need:

7 pound pork roast with bone
2 heads of garlic
9 cups water
1/3 cup pules 1/4 cup chili powder, divided
4 teaspoons cumin seed
3 teaspoons salt, divided
1 package (8 oz) dried corn shucks
1 package (4.4 pounds) masa harina (about 16 cups)
2 pounds (4 cups) shortening or lard
1 can (14.5 oz) beef broth

At 8:30 p.m. bone the pork shoulder roast. Cut the pork into 3-inch pieces. Put the meat and bone 6 qt saucepan. Pour the water in. It will fill it up to the very brim. Realize that even if you didn't still have to add the garlic that you need a bigger pan. Ask your mother if she has one. She will direct you to her closet where you will need to retrieve this:
Switch the meat, bone and water to the stockpot. Then separate the heads of garlic into cloves and peel them. Put the garlic into the pot. Make sure the water covers the meat. If not, add more water. Bring the whole pot to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to mediium low. Cover the pot and simmer it for about 2 hours (or until meat is tender). While you're waiting, get on the computer so you'll stay awake. By the time the meat it done, it's at least 11:30 pm. You're supposed to place the meat and liquid in separate containers. So you get these out:
Then you try to strain the meat without splashing yourself with the scalding broth. It only splashes once or twice and you jump out of the way just in time. Then you "discard" the bone. You're supposed to shred the meat with either your fingers or a food processor. Then you put the shredded meat in here:
But it has never been used before, so first you wash it with hot water (no soap!) and then you dry thoroughly. Then you spray it with cooking oil. And, finally, you get to use it. So you put the shredded meat in, along with 1/3 cup chill powder, the cumin seed, and a teaspoon of salt. Stir it all up and add 3 cups of the "reserved liquid." Simmer the mixture over low heat for an hour and be sure to stir it a lot. If necessary, add more of the broth to keep the meat from sticking to the pan. Then you put the lid on the bowl of "reserved liquid" and and stick it in the refrigerator.

Transfer the flavored meat into the six quart saucepan you originally tried to use and since it doesn't have a lid, cover it with a dinner plate. Put it in the refrigerator, too. Clean the dutch oven right away. Rinse it in hot water (do NOT use soap) and dry it with a dish towel. It's still plenty seasoned, so go ahead and store it away with a dish towel folded up inside between the lid and oven as shown in the above photo so that the air can circulate. Make sure some of the towel is inside as well, to soak up any moisture, so it doesn't rust.

Then fill up the stock pot with hot water to soak until you bother cleaning it (spilling the water all over your jeans is optional). By now it's 1 am, so go to sleep since the broth and meat filling need to be left in the fridge overnight anyway.

The next day, soak the corn husks for 30 minutes to soften. Clean and separate the shucks. While that going on, mix up the dough. In a big bowl (one the size of the one shown above), combine the remaining 1/4 cup chili powder and 2 teaspoons of salt. Then get out the lard. You asked for 2 pounds, but your mother when she bought the ingredients didn't realize that and bought 4 pounds. You don't want to cut it down the middle and use half because that is inexact and you're a bit of a perfectionist. You ignore the part in the recipe where it says "4 cups" as an alternate measurement and do it the hard way. There are 139 Tablespoons in 4 lbs of lard (or so the Nutrition facts on the bucket say) and there are 16 tablespoons in a cup. So you do some math.

139 / 16 = 8.69 cups
8 x 16 = 128 tablespoons
139 - 128 = 11 tablespoons
4 lbs of lard = 8 cups +11 tablespoons
2 lbs of lard = 4 cups + 5 tablespoons +1 1/2 teaspoons

So you cut 4 cups + 5 tablespoons +1 1/2 teaspoons of lard into the masa mixture until it "resembles course corn meal." Skim the fat off of the broth (which is now jelly-like from being refrigerated). If you don't have 8 cups, then add the beef broth to make 8 cups. If you added more than nine cups of water when you were boiling the pork and then only added 3 cups of broth when you were simmering the meat in the dutch oven, you have 9 cups of broth. So be sure and measure. Add the liquid to the masa mixture and stir until you have a soft dough that will stick together.

Now it's time to assemble the tamales. Take a corn shuck and lay it out like this:
Spread about 1/4 cup of dough two-thirds of the way across the straight end and about 4 1/2 inches down, like so:
Now spread a heaping tablespoon of meat down the center of the dough:
Fold the edge closest to you over the meat, while still leaving a small bit of dough exposed:
Fold the far side all the way over until the dough edges overlap. Wrap the shuck all the way around the tamale. Fold the tail under, across the seam.
Stand the tamales in a container, or tie them shut with string. You can freeze them for later or cook them now.

To cook: Stand the tamales in a steamer basket with the open ends pointing up. Place the basket over hot water in a stockpot. Cover and steam 1-1.5 hours. Serve warm.

Supposedly it makes 5 1/2 dozen tamales, but I have yet to finish making them all. I made thirty, ate two, and still have a lot of dough and corn husks left.

Edited to Add: Don't steam the tamales. It makes them mushier and it's nasty. Cook them at a low heat for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

Thursday Thirteen: What's On My Mind

2009-05-21T18:27:00.004-07:00

Thirteen Things on My Mind:

1. A storm is brewing outside

2. I need to make tamales

3. The dishwasher needs emptying

4. The weather is making the internet sporadic

5. I need to put up the new shower curtain

6. What will I post next?

7. I would like to go on a road trip through Western Colorado

8. Are the no-bake cookies cool enough to eat?

9. Will we have pizza for dinner?

10. I wonder who I'll be in five years...

11. I should not have had so much to eat

12. I love the overcast weather, but I wanted to sleep outside on the trampoline again tonight (like I did last night and the night before that).

13. Why don't I like being around people 'just to have fun'?

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Carbon Footprint

2009-05-21T15:03:00.007-07:00

I'm on a blogging extravaganza! I just feel really chatty round about now. I also decided to do one of those carbon footprint calculators. So I did. I put in the information for a family of four since my stepfather isn't here often enough to count for anything (I did count his plane trip, though). I used this one, although this one is also good.

This is the other one that I said was also good (my family's results).

It's not too great, but it's not too shabby, either.

No More Second-Hand?

2009-05-21T14:45:00.002-07:00

While I'm on a roll with all this lawmaking fun, let's talk about consignment and secondhand stores. There's this marvelous new law that says those NO ONE is allowed to sell any products meant for those age 12 or younger if they contains lead or phthalates. Check out these links:

P.S. If you want to back up your blog online (in case you accidentally delete your blog, or worse), try this site. And if you use Blogger and want a copy saved to the computer, then go to "Settings>Basic>Blog Tools>Export blog."

Exasperated at the Entire Nation

2009-05-21T13:59:00.004-07:00

The thing that most bothers me about his country is how high our laziness quotient is. We're too lazy to exercise, so we're the ninth fattest nation in the world (74.1% of those over age 15 are overweight) and moving right up. We're too lazy to eat right, so every 34 seconds, somebody dies of heart disease and every 20 seconds, somebody has a heart attack (see statistics). We eat food loaded with pesticides because it's cheap and wonder why disease is so rampant. We mechanize our lives and neglect nature (pretending she is inefficient) and then wonder why we are all so emotionally messed up. We're too lazy to care what our government is doing and so they pass laws that infringe on our rights. And then we're too lazy to do anything. We're too lazy to care about our planet, so we pollute our land with landfills, chop down our forests, build factories that release all kinds of air pollutions, pour our wastes into water sources...and the list goes on.

Some people try to live in such a way that there will still be natural beauty and wilderness left in our country fifty years from now. And that is great. Keep up the good work, but this is a rant (in case you hadn't already noticed lol) and so that's all I'm going to say about you.

I'm going to end with a quote:

Your land is a spiritual responsibility: Whoever you are, whatever your faith, the land you live on is a spiritual responsibility. With privilege comes responsibility!

We all have to become political activists, fighting the sources of pollution wherever we find them! If we don't fight it will keep on happening...the moral person takes responsibility for his or her entire life, and afterlife, and the lives of those given to us as a responsibility--and the tomorrow of this great gift of a planet! This is one of those times in history when everybody has to stand up and be counted. You're either for planetary death by poison or you're or a responsible, protective stewardship that will recover and maintain healthy soil, air, and water. There's no in between. At the rate we're going, the next 10, 20, or, at the most, 50 years, will decisively tip the balance one way or the other...there can never be a letting up of this vigilence, this policing and regulation of government and industry's tendency to pollute.

There is change, good change, coming...When we're awakened and aroused to the point at which people do what's needed without legislation to force them, that's the best of all possible systems...It can happen. It has to. Industry and government have to be willing, or forced, to..avoid irreparable environmental damage.

--"The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Carla Emery, pages 13-14 (9th edition)

HR 5122, the Insurrection Act, & other handy tidbits

2009-05-21T12:13:00.004-07:00

Those striving for self-sufficiency generally grow food and then store it for winter use when there are limited growing opportunities (I sound like an Agriculture lecture, eek!). And Mormons have their year supply/food storage thing going on. Now, have you ever heard of "food hoarding?" "Martial Law?" "The Insurrection Act?"

Let's take it from the top. The Insurrection Act is a set of laws that serves just one purpose: preventing the President from using the military to control the people in our country as Monarchy and other such government systems do. It doesn't totally prevent him from using the military on American soil, but it is supposed to severely cripple him in that respect. On October 17, 2006, our now ex-President (is there another, official, term for that?) Bush signed into law a bill that seeks to overcome that limitation. HR 5122, Subtitle H, Section 1076 amends Section 333 of Title 10, United States Code. Section 333's original text can be found here, while a copy of the HR 5122 and, more specifically, the amendment to Section 333 can be found here (after clicking "continue on to the bill," you will be taken straight to the part you are looking for: section 1076; it's a long bill and so it might take a minute or two to load). I'll give you a few minutes to read and maybe drown a little in legal jargon.

Done? Great. Basically what the bill is doing is allowing the President to declare martial law on an area without the permission of the local authorities and to take any troops from any state to accomplish that. And there are no limits on what situations martial law is acceptable in:

"the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable ..."

And that could mean anything. This article discusses what exactly this bill is and why it's so "disturbing" (for lack of a more powerful word).

Okay, so now we know that the Prez can declare martial law on any one of us at any time for any reason. So what is martial law? (And how come if you switch the 'i' and 't' t becomes marital law?) Quite simply it's the set of laws that are put in place when the military is doing the police and court's job of enforcing the law. And instead of our judicial system, they have a military tribunal they call a "court martial." Most likely the writ of habeas corpus will be suspended. And there is generally a curfew. This "martial law" is normally only put in place during war when there isn't a government. See this page for more details.

In order to prevent the misuse of the power of military law, there is (or was) this thing, Posse Comitatus, which basically says "the military isn't allowed to be involved in enforcing domestic laws without going through lots of trouble with Congress." But then HR 5122 came along and so it isn't really in effect anymore.

So where does "food hoarding" come in? (you: food hoarding? what has that got to do with anything? you haven't said anything about it in this whole post or even... me: cool your jets, sweetie pie. I mentioned it at the beginning. you: the beginning? yeah right. you've been yammering so long I can't even remember that far. I probably wasn't even born then me: just sit down and listen. leave your complaints in the comments section okay, m'dear? you (sulkily): fine) Food hoarding is what most people call the behavior of those who store food (like homesteaders and Mormons). Most states have some kind of "anti-hoarding" law which usually says something like "you can store a week's worth of food, but if you have any more than that, then we can take it the extra and do what we please with it." This article discusses so-called food hoarding as well as Executive Orders. They say it better than I can, so please read it. Also, under martial law, they can seize your goods and belongings without permission. The ultimate edict amounts to bad BAD BAD.

Hot Belly Mama

2009-05-21T11:58:00.003-07:00

I have a new blog to add to the mix. It goes by the name of "Hot Belly Mama" and it's about a lady who calls herself "Mount Belly Mama" at the moment. She lives in the "Pacific Northwest, USA" (read: Washington, Oregon area). She lives on eight acres with her husband, Bo, eight (or was it seven? nine?) cats, and a lot of chickens. They are expecting a new baby (their first) very soon (like next month-ish). She's interested in plenty of different "alternative lifestyles" like babywearing, cloth diapering, sustainable living...good stuff we are all into lol.

She has an interesting writing style that I enjoy. She's sometimes poetic, other times humorous, but generally an interesting mix of the two.

MBM also co-authors "The KISS Journals" which I have yet to read. ('KISS' is an acronym for "Keep it Simple Sisterhood.") It's a simple living blog all about sustainable life (gardening, getting out of debt, raising chickens, knitting, baking from scratch, getting off grid, whatever) and there are about twenty different people posting there.

Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood

2009-05-19T23:36:00.004-07:00

I just caught up on a new blog. This one is called "Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood" and is written by Stephanie. She is a Christian mother of five. She and her husband live in West Virginia with four of her children: Kellen (10), Lydia (7), Nolan (5), and Vivian (3). She has a garden and menagerie of animals including chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs, cows, horses and goats.

Her blog is an interesting read as she homeschools her children and lives in 100 acres of wood. I've enjoyed the read so far and hope for more adventures to come.

She also has another blog that I have not yet read. It's called "Stop the Ride" and it's about "living a simple and frugal life in a world that isn't."

More Meaningless Chatter

2009-05-19T21:29:00.004-07:00

I have a dilemma. I don't like spiders (except Daddy Long Legs). But I don't want to hurt spiders. And I don't want them to hurt me. And there's a huge one on the wall a few yards away. And I am squeamish. This is one of the things I hate about summer. The insect population goes crazy! Last summer there was an excess of moths. You'd drive down the road at night in the middle of July and you'd swear it was snowing. Please don't ever let there be an excess of spiders!

I have been listening to the new age station of an online radio site. I really love new age music. My favorites artists are probably Enya and Loreena McKennit. I recently bought "Ever After" on DVD. We've owned it as a family, but as one of my favorite movies (or maybe the favorite), I wanted it for my own. Funny thing. The family's is rated "PG" and mine is rated "PG-13"...why? Anyways, so as a "special feature," it has the theatrical trailer. I watched it and lets just say that they did a spectacular job. And you know what pleased me the most? The trailer is accompanied by two songs. The first is a haunting melody: "The Mummers' Dance" by Loreena McKennit. The second is more 'freeflying' and adventurous: "Fable" by Robert Miles. This is the trailer; tell me if it doesn't make you want to watch the movie (whether for the first time or the hundredth):

Our Bookmobile

2009-05-19T10:02:00.006-07:00

I was going to plant flowers in this one spot in my garden, but instead I planted beans. :)

We don't have a library, but recently the county bookmobile started coming every other Wednesday. Not only can I check out as many books as I please, I can go on their website and request books from different libraries in our county be placed on hold and reserved for me. Today I went on and put these books on hold:

"I Can Lick Thirty Tigers Today and Other Stories" by Dr. Seuss
"Wild Mind" by Natalie Goldberg
"Thunder and Lightening" by Natalie Goldberg
"The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman
Three books from the "Foxfire" series
"Utopia" by Thomas More

I also wanted "Of Wolves and Men" by Barry Lopez and "Women and Nature" by Susan Griffin but I guess I'll have to try either interlibrary loan or else buy it since they don't have it.

Nothing Specific

2009-05-17T10:17:00.002-07:00

I found the camera. I can't find the bloody cord. So it doesn't do much good.

I did finally get some things done. I planted most of my little seedlings. None of the catnip did anything. And I only have one jalapeno. The soil desperately needs improvement, but although I know of a great deal of different things that can be used for such a purpose, I can't find seem to be able to obtain them. So I have tilled my garden by hand, all the while cursing the stupid clay and reminding myself how much I loathe red dirt.

My mother and stepfather are at church and the batteries in the mouse are getting low and I have no idea where the replacement batteries or the mouse-with-a-cord is because my mother doesn't put anything in a logical place and, even worse, she never remembers where she put it. Let's just hope that the mouse lasts another hour and a half until they get back so that I can keep doing the computer thing.

I wonder what I want for breakfast.

More Censored Book Fun

2009-05-08T15:55:00.001-07:00

"Don't Read This Book" written and performed by Keith "Rockerbob" Lewis:

200 Banned (& Challenged) Books

2009-05-08T12:20:00.007-07:00

Arranged alphabetically by title. Bold the books you have read, italicize the books you want to read. Place a checkmark (√) next to the books you own. In the comments, place a link to your 200 Banned, tell how many you've read, and/or list the titles and authors of any other books that qualify for this list (that generally means anything written for audiences under eighteen that includes one or more of the following: sex, violence, addresses serious issues, addresses the darker side or humanity, contains ideas that are not 'politically correct,' contains ideas that aren't conservative, et cetera).

The difference between banned and challenged books: Challenged is when someone tries to restrict a book. A ban means it's been removed.

“[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” — Judy Blume

195 Banned (& Challenged) Books:

1984 by George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Time To Kill by John Grisham
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael Bellesiles
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
Blubber by Judy Blume
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris
Christine by Stephen King
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Cut by Patricia McCormick
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan
Deal With It! by Esther Drill
Deenie by Judy Blume
Detour for Emmy by Marilyn Reynolds
Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle
Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
Fade by Robert Cormier
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
Fear Street (Series) R. L. Stine
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
Flashcards of My Life by Charise Mericle Harper
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Forever by Judy Blume
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Grendel by John Gardner
Growltiger's Last Stand by T.S. Eliot
Guess What? by Mem Fox
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Holy Bible
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Saw Esau by Iona Opte
In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Ironman by Chris Crutcher
It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families by Robie H. Harris
Jack by A.M. Homes
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
Junie B. Jones (series) by Barbara Park
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Jumper by Steven Gould
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
King and King by Linda de Haan
Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
Life is Funny by E.R. Frank
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Mick Harte Was Here by Barbara Park
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Nathan’s Run by John Gilstrap
Native Son by Richard Wright
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellog
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Sex by Madonna
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
Shade’s Children by Garth Nix
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Watkins
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Taming the Star by Runner S.E. Hinton
That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
The Brimstone Journals by Ron Koertge
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole
The Fighting Ground by Avi
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Lord of the Rings (series) by JRR Tolkien
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Shining by Stephen King
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss
The Wish Giver by Bill Brittain
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
When Dad Killed Mom by Julius Lester
What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Women in Love by DH Lawrence
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Fantasies by Nancy Friday
You Hear Me by Betsy Franco

This list is far from exhaustive. Some good books that aren't on here but qualify are "Boy Toy" by Barry Lyga, "Tender Morsels" by Margo Lanagan, "Rubyfruit Jungle" by Rita Mae Brown, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" by Tom Robbins, "Push" by Sapphire, "Leaving Brooklyn" by Lynne Sharon Schwartz....

P.S. This is post number 50!!!

Banned (& Challenged) Books

2009-05-08T11:36:00.008-07:00

I am mucho annoyed. Only annoyed? you say. Well, perhaps it is more than that. A few different things I came across as I traversed the world wide web have sparked me to add my own voice to the others on a certain subject: banned and challenged books.

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

Each year the ALA (American Library Association) sponsors Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read. This year it's September 26th-October 3rd (2009).

Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) is asked why the week is called “Banned Books Week” instead of “Challenged Books Week,” since the majority of the books featured during the week are not banned, but “merely” challenged. There are two reasons. One, ALA does not “own” the name Banned Books Week, but is just one of several cosponsors of BBW; therefore, ALA cannot change the name without all the cosponsors agreeing to a change. Two, none want to do so, primarily because a challenge is an attempt to ban or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A successful challenge would result in materials being banned or restricted.
Read more...

Want to know which books are banned/challenged? The list might surprise you ("Freaky Friday" is on there?! WT*?). I have posted it here.

Resources:

The most frequently challenged authors of 2008
1. Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
2. Philip Pullman
3. Lauren Myracle <--Gemini: Amazing author! Probably placed here because of her books "TTYL," "TTFN," and "L8R, G8R"
4. Jim Pipe
5. Alvin Schwartz
6. Chris Crutcher
7. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
8. Rudolfo Anaya
9. Stephen Chbosky
10. Cecily Von Ziegesar <--Gemini: Another awesome author. Placed here because of her Gossip Girl series?

Top Ten Challenged Authors 1990-2004
1. Alvin Schwartz
2. Judy Blume <--Gemini: Yet another great author. She's probably on here because of "Forever" and maybe "Then Again, Maybe I Won't" as well as a few others.
3. Robert Cormier
4. J.K. Rowling <--Gemini: Obviously on here because of her Harry Potter books (there's nothing wrong with them!)
5. Michael Willhoite
6. Katherine Paterson
7. Stephen King <--Gemini: Three guesses why he's on here.
8. Maya Angelou <--Gemini: Author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
9. R.L. Stine <--Gemini: I personally don't like very many of his books but that's just cuz I don't prefer the horror genre. There was one about vampires I really liked though. Fear Street or something. My sister, on the other hand, adores his books. But then again, horror is one of her favorite genres.
10. John Steinbeck <--Gemini: Authored "Of Mice and Men"

Out of 8,332 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, as compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom does not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges. Research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported.

Touch the Earth Farm

2009-05-03T09:34:00.004-07:00

I haven't updated the LiveJournal or WordPress sites very recently, especially since I am having trouble with the importer on WordPress. This blog gets updated first cuz it's where I post the original. I import posts into WordPress and I copy and paste for LiveJournal (setting the date & time to match the one here).

I have just finished catching up on another blog. It's called "Touch the Earth Farm" and it's written by a lady doing the homestead thing on a 5 acre farm(ette?) in Maryland with her husband, two daughters, and son. They have plenty of livestock and they run a small CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

Her blog can be found here (as well as in the sidebar) and her farm's website can be found here.

More Swine Flu Goodness

2009-05-02T11:38:00.001-07:00

Also check out this article: "Critical Alert: The Swine Flu Pandemic--Fact or Fiction?" It addresses many of the same issues as the article mentioned in my previous post on swine flu, but in a less sensational way.

And this YouTube video (it's of ads in the seventies promoting swine flu shots and it's kinda sorta really ridiculous):

A lot of people have been thinking that big-time Agribusiness is the cause of this latest swine flu (it wouldn't surprise me) and that's what this YouTube video is about:

Urban Homesteading: Garden Girl TV

2009-05-02T11:20:00.003-07:00

A lot of times homesteading in town is overlooked or not addressed. We know it exists, but we don't talk about it enough. However, there is a site I found that is all about "urban sustainable living."

This is the teaser-like commercial thing:

The website is Garden Girl TV.

Swine Flu

2009-05-02T09:42:00.005-07:00

Swine Flu seems to be the big new around here. And a lot of people seem to be panicked. There was a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) conference today and a nearly everyone who is involved with it has decided not to attend so that they don't get swine flu. My friend down the street? Her parents went through and deep-cleaned their house. And we were going to have a bonfire there last Thursday, but they canceled it because of the Swine Flu. So we moved it to another friends house. A lady I know and her family are thinking they don't want to go to the wedding they were planning on attending on the 29th because it's in Mexico.

And yet I am not afraid. I had heard of how it came around in the seventies when I was reading something on bird flu (some sort of expose, I think). Then when people are all "The Swine are Coming!" I thought I'd do a little research. Skepticism first, then--if it makes sense--then I thought I might try panicking (although I'm not very good at it).

First, I thought I might like to find out what this flu is. According to Wikipedia:

Swine influenza (also called swine flu, hog flu, and pig flu) refers to influenza caused by those strains of influenza virus that usually infect pigs and are called swine influenza virus (SIV).^[1] Swine influenza is common in pigs in the midwestern United States (and occasionally in other states), Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe (including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Italy), Kenya, Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and other parts of eastern Asia.^[1]

Transmission of swine influenza virus from pigs to humans is not common. When it is transmitted, it does not always cause human influenza; often, the only sign of infection is the presence of antibodies, detectable only by laboratory tests. When transmission results in influenza in a human, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People who work with pigs, especially people with intense exposures, are at risk of catching swine flu. However, only about fifty such transmissions have been recorded since the mid-20th Century, when identification of influenza subtypes became possible. (Importantly, eating pork does not pose a risk of infection.) Rarely, these strains of swine flu can pass from human to human. In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort.

The 2009 flu outbreak in humans that is widely known as "swine flu" is due to an apparently virulent new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that was produced by reassortment from one strain of human influenza virus, one strain of avian influenza virus, and two separate strains of swine influenza. The origin of this new strain is unknown, and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reports that this strain has not been isolated in pigs.^[2] It passes with apparent ease from human to human, an ability attributed to an as-yet unidentified mutation.^[3] This 2009 H1N1 strain causes the normal symptoms of influenza, such as fever, coughing and headache.^[4]

Read the entire entry...

Symptoms of Swine Flu in humans:

Fever
Lethargy
Lack of appetite
Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Runny nose
Coughing

The thing I don't understand is how Swine Flu could actually kill someone. Aside from dehydration (which is easily remedied through either drinking plenty of fluids and/or being hooked up to an IV), which of those is actually so dangerous? I mean, in order to live, your heart, brain, lungs, etc must perform their functions. So, how are they prevented from doing their respective jobs by influenza? But whatever.

Take a look at this article. Go ahead and skip past the first section down to where it says "Swine Flu Expose" if you like. I cannot say I agree with her version of who and why, but I do believe the how. Take what you can out of the article. I don't know if it's totally true, but it's definitely something to consider. Take a look, and then tell me what you think (remember to be civil, of course).

Garden Goals Accomplished?

2009-04-25T11:52:00.003-07:00

I'm sure I talk about the weather a lot. Probably because it's so fascinating? ha ha. So on Thursday, April 16th, it snowed. The next day it was clear and the wind was freezing cold. Then on Saturday, the weather was perfect and it held out for almost a whole week. Yesterday it started blowing again, and it is still windy. But except for that, it's pretty great outside.

I decided to prune back the bush rather than remove it for a lot of reasons. It was there first, it will provide shade for plants that need it, et cetera... That bush actually turned out to be two bushes. A large alive one, and a smaller dead one. I cleared out the dead bush and pruned the dead branches off of the alive plant. For my trouble I got a beautiful healthy-looking bush, scratches all over my arms (about half of which were deep enough to bleed, so now I have some wicked-looking scratches...makes me feel tough lol), and a nice sunburn on my back, shoulders, and upper arms.

We don't have a rototiller, so I have been tilling the soil with a pitchfork. I turned over an 8x12 patch of dirt around the dirt, and will turn over the rest of my 20x30 garden next week. Our soil is what I consider a blank slate: clay with pretty much no minerals, etc for the plants to feast upon. I would like to mix in sand from a nearby wash and manure from the local dairy to improve the soil. We will see what actually happens.

Oh! Some of my plant babies have sprouted! I wish I could find a camera. My Calendula is just starting out, and my Walking Onions are growing so fast, I can almost see them growing!

My "floorplan" for my garden has most of the garden as a food garden, but there is also a small amount of space set aside for a flower, herb, water, and rock garden as well.

My goals for this coming week are: turn over the rest of my garden, build a compost pile, decide if I'm going to use grow boxes, start my cold weather plants, and begin improving the soil.

Mmmmm...Raw Milk!

2009-04-18T19:50:00.003-07:00

I had forgotten how good raw milk is! My mother has done a 180 with her stance on milk. Before, we drank soy and she drank almond. Now she's drinking raw milk from the local dairy. Just barely, I decided to have a cup to see if I still liked it. And I do. Pasteurized, homogenized milk is another story. From time to time, our neighbors gift us with a gallon. And it sits in the refrigerator and rots unless we pass it on to someone who doesn't mind the 'dead' flavor. Drinking soy milk is different from drinking cow milk. The animal milk tastes more alive, for one thing. I don't know how to describe it any better than that. My future plans definitely include a cow or a goat or both for milk.

You see, I was raised on goat milk. My dad raised goats. His preference is French Alpine/Saanen crosses. He would butcher goats and although I would disappear for the actual killing, once they were dead, I would come out and watch.

Then my mom left my dad and so we switched to pasteurized, homogenized cow's milk. From there, we moved on to rice milk and soy milk. Then we were drinking raw milk, then back to soy milk and then my mom switched to almond. Now my mother is drinking raw milk again while my sister and I continue to drink soy.

Nice Weather, NAIS, Frankenfoods

2009-04-18T09:21:00.004-07:00

So guess what? I have to leave for a church activity in a bit. Normally no biggie. Except the weather is perfect so therefore I want to work on my garden! :*( Hopefully we'll get back early enough that I can at least deal with that bush. And my fingers are crossed for perfect weather on Monday.

I also found a "State NAIS Administrator Directory." So if you want to go complain to him or her, there's the link.

Remember a couple years back when they made rice with human genes? Well, here are some articles on it.

It makes me shudder to think about actually eating foods like that. Yuck. Cannibalism. Does anyone know what became of the project?

Have a nice day! :P

Ironwood Farm Project

2009-04-17T22:01:00.004-07:00

I have new blog to add to my blogroll! I just finished catching up! Whoo-hoo!

This blogger's name is Jenny, and her blog is called "Ironwood Farm Project." She has two children, a boy and a girl, which she homeschools in an unschooling way. She and her husband live in New Mexico on a 10 acre family farm in an off-the-grid strawbale home (I know all of you are green with envy lol) which is featured in this article. She does Flamenco as a hobby and is working on living sustainably. They have cattle, a pair of pigs, sheep, bees, a garden, and various poultry. Her husband had an awful accident involving his thigh and there are complications at this point. They are also planning on making a living with their farm at this time.

So off with you now! Check them out!

NAIS Update.

2009-04-17T19:31:00.002-07:00

A News Release from the USDA's site:

Release No. 0108.09
Contact:
Nayyera Haq (202) 720-4623
Jerry Redding (202) 720-4623

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK SEEKS DIALOGUE WITH PRODUCERS AND STAKEHOLDERS ON NATIONAL ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2009--Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today held a roundtable discussion with a variety of stakeholders representing the full spectrum of views on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The event kicks off a listening tour to gather feedback and input that will assist the Secretary in making decisions about the future direction of animal identification and traceability in the United States.

Read more...

So, show of hands. Whose hoping that they'll decide NAIS is either a big dumb idea or at least that it shouldn't be compulsory? And who thinks they'll just make it worse? Interesting...comments anyone?

What is this Orange Border?

2009-04-17T19:00:00.005-07:00

A. The trench due for construction to make eight continents, cuz we're tired of just seven.
B. Cheese. My five year old decided to take spray cheese and outline our country.
C. The Constitution-Free zone. Places where an unconstitutional effort to curb immigration is in effect.
D. Cities we are going to blow up with bombs in an effort to clean up our borders and beaches.

On one of the blogs I frequent, I found some disturbing news. (The answer is 'C' by the way. 'C' for 'correct.') Here's an excerpt from her post:

That's the map of the 100 mile US Border Patrol zone that people are calling the Constitution-Free Zone. Not many people have heard about this, and I had heard rumors, but I didn't realize they had put it into effect. This was brought to my attention because of a pastor that got his head split open at one of the checkpoints within the 100 mile along the Mexico side of this zone. Evidently, there are now a series of checkpoints along major highways...

Read the entire post...

I found it very disturbing, but I don't know what should be done. I know that others should be alerted to this, so spread the word. What else do you think we should do?

Catch-Up Post: Peat Pots, Career, Survivalists, etc

2009-04-17T14:19:00.005-07:00

I haven't posted in awhile, I know. And I really wish that either my mom's camera could be found or else that my sister's camera had batteries (and that the cord weren't MIA), because I really want to post some pictures of the seeds I have started in peat pots.

Oh well.

So I have 50 plants started:

4 parsley
3 jalapeno peppers (capsicum annuum)
5 catnip (nepeta cataria)
4 calendula (calendula officinalis)
12 onion (Walking & Red Weaver)
6 I forgot to label (I hope I actually planted something in there!!!)
5 various melons (Schoon's Hard Shell Melon, Bush Sugar Baby Watermelon, Minnesota Midget Melon, and Eden's Gem Melon)
7 tomatoes (Big Red & Manitoba)
2 Armenian cucumber
1 pumpkin (nondescript kind from a store in town. Pumpkins don't like being transplanted--or so I've read--and so this is a test to see if that's true)

(That's only 49, which one did I forget to list??? Or did I add up the numbers incorrectly?)

The weather here sucks. It's either stormy or else bitter cold which doesn't make for pleasant gardening weather. I guess I'm just being a wuss and need to bite the bullet (although it has been snowing the last few days...) and get to work. It never frosts after Mother's Day, so that's when the plants need to go in, while I need to put in the plants that don't mind the cold now, as well as prepare the soil and trim back the bush.

My mother has actually been considering getting a milk cow and perhaps a sheep, if she can get the right fencing for them. I feel like "O_O" because she has always been anti-animal before. She didn't mind cats and she dealt with my chickens, but in all honesty, livestock has always been something she wasn't the slightest bit interested in, while I felt like a bit of an oddball dreaming about cows and horses and chickens and sheep and goats and...well, you get the picture.

So now she's wanting a cow for raw milk (we can get raw milk at the dairy in town, though) and she's wanting a sheep to munch the weeds until they are dead. I guess I'm having trouble adjusting because although raised a city girl, she likes the country but she has never really been into country stuff. Or at least not in my seventeen years. Now, she is suddenly into gardening food rather than just trees and the occasional tomato or vine and and wishing for livestock. Now before you get the wrong idea, I am pleased, just reeling in surprise and trying to get used to the idea. I think it might be a little bit spurred by her obsession (dare I call it that?) with TEOTWAWKI.

Incidently, most people in this tiny settlement are Survivalists. I am not talking the positive, more 'normal' survivalist, either. I am talking guns (for when they become the new Waco), nuclear bomb shelters (for when Obama decides to exterminate them), gardens, solar power, horses (to go get water up the canyon), marijuana (because it's an herb, and inhaling smoke is very beneficial to the lungs), a disregard for building codes (we're talking septic system so many feet from your water supply, not whether your house is underground or made of strawbales), a disregard for laws (like registering one's kids for homeschooling) and other things that make life tougher (not getting a legal birth certificate for their children or a social security number, teaching their children to be afraid of the government in much the same way as a rabbit is afraid of its predator, etc).

Most of these things are not bad in and of themselves. What is wrong is the attitude that accompanies them. Guns are not bad. Stocking up on guns because you think the government is going to massacre you is not a healthy attitude. Sure, the government does things that aren't right, but I doubt any of their plans include genocide in a remote settlement in the middle of nowhere. Realism, please, people!

This is turning out to be a long post. :)

Our washing machine is quite broken. It doesn't switch from cycle to cycle. You start it at the beginning of the cycle and it fills up with water and then agitates forever until you tell it to spin. Then it spins for awhile, then it does this weird thing that I can't explain until you switch it to rinse or else off... We really need to get that fixed.

I am finishing my schooling years and now I have to figure out what's next. I do want to end up homesteading, but the 'from here to there' is a little tricky. I need a field. I'm considering veterinary medicine, but I am not a fan of the years of schooling it will take. I'd like to write and/or maybe something artistic, but I am still weighing the positives and negatives of each. A positive would be something like "working freelance from home" while a negative would be something like the erratic income from such a job.

There are also other fields I am looking at, but I really am having difficulty finding which one would be the best choice. My specific religion has a belief system that includes being a mother and not working outside the home once I marry, but not only am I opposed to the attitude of "just get married and let him take care of you" and not only do I think that living with "marriage" as one's center of the universe, but I also believe that a stay-at-home mother is a good thing.

So more or less, I need a career I can continue after marriage with plenty of time for family but I need a career I can make plenty of money to support myself anyways (because I am planning to homestead in the near future and let marriage happen when it happens, so marriage could be before or after I get started with this dream of mine...doesn't matter). I also need something I can do while homesteading because I don't want to homestead as anything more than a hobby. That may change in the future, but at the moment I'd rather have it as a (time consuming, frustrating) hobby than something to make into a lucrative endeavor (way to add stress, IMO).

Ten Things About Me

2009-04-03T18:52:00.003-07:00

I have seen this sort of thing on various other blogs and thought I'd give it a try.

I embrace many alternative beliefs: The Law of Attraction (only I have my own version which is actually more of a "Law of Creation." Ask me about it sometime. Or maybe one day I'll address it on my philosophical blog), attachment parenting, unassisted childbirth, healing with herbs, unschooling, sustainable living, etc, etc.
I believe in magic (not magic like Harry Potter or something; something more along the lines of the magic found in Nature, magic in creativity, magic in books and pictures and music, and a belief in creatures like dragons and such).
I believe we can communicate with animals (see "Learning Their Language" by Marta Willliams).
I am a flexetarian. That means I believe in eating only a very little meat, mainly when meat is all that's available or in the winter. In spring, summer, and fall; I think we should be eating little or no meat.
I would love to be totally self-reliant and only have to pay taxes on land and perhaps buy a few things I would be unable to produce, such as oranges and needles and things like that (salt, maybe, although I would love to be able to make that, too).
Although I prefer the country and have lived there most of my life, I have nothing against cities, either, or those from the city (unlike too many of my country friends). I definitey prefer the country, though.
I am unschooled.
I want to homestead.
I want to marry and have children sometime in the next ten years or so.
The Kinds of Music I Like: Classical, Holiday, New Age, European Folk, Alternative Rock, 80s Rock, Hard Rock, and any other kind of rock (except pop) with a touch of punk and scream-o.
I love all holidays both Christian and Pagan and try to celebrate them all.
I'm 5'8"
My Ancestors are entirely Western European (Mostly English and Swedish, as well as French, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Danish, and German)....none from any of the fascinatingly exotic countries: Africa, Japan, South America....

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it SNOW!!!

2009-04-03T17:32:00.003-07:00

The Weather lately has been insane. I went to bed at 5am this morning and consequently did not awaken until 3pm. Part of the reason I woke up so late (aside from the late night) was that it was very cloudy. When I woke up, it was snowing! It rained last Sunday, so I figured that was what we would be getting from here on out. Instead, it snowed a half inch or so. Then, it sleeted another half inch ('sleet' is what you call those tiny little balls that fall from the sky that look like fairy snowballs--as opposed to iceballs that we refer to as 'hail'--right?). Now it's snowing hard and fast and we already have a few inches of it and more is coming down.

My "L" key only seems to work every other time I press it, so if some words don't seem like words, try inserting an "L" at random and see if it makes sense.

My little sister bought the newest Fablehaven book four days after it came out and now she's finished it, so I get to read it now!

With my Garden buried under snow, I don't think I'll be working on it much right now. I should be starting seeds right now, and I should be planting the cold weather stuff. I have 1001 reason why I'm not, but that would make this post too long LOL. The main reason, though, is that I've never had a real garden. As a child I would plant seeds in the ground, maybe dig some canals for irrigation, fill up the canals, and for the most part forget about it, returning to water perhaps two more times. Naturally, living in the Gila Valley in AZ, nothing ever grew. Even when I moved to this climate, it still didn't grow...probably something to do with the billions of weeds choking my "garden."

So to prevent abandonment, I am planning to have just a few different plants: some fruits veggies, herbs and flowers. Once I see how I am with a garden (now, at my grand old age of 17 :P) and make all my beginning mistakes, I will add more plants a little at a time so I don't overwhelm myself and abandon the whole project out of confusion.

I made enchiladas. Yum! I wanted to post a picture but my mother's camera is MIA, so I can't post beautiful pictures of corn tortillas marinated in red sauce and cheese... :*( Oh well.

I'll Huff, and I'll Puff, and I'll Blo-o-o-ow Your House Down!

2009-03-22T13:51:00.003-07:00

Ha ha! This makes 35 posts! I am very proud of myself. I never thought I'd ever, ever post more than maybe five on any single blog. It's not like I'm really good with follow-through. On the things that matter to me, I do fine, but on hobby-like things (such as this blog), I really don't do much cuz even though they're fun, I don't make me do it and neither does anyone else (not that anyone really could make me if I didn't want to...).

When you have some really nice days of spring, you forget about the other half of spring. The part where the wind is blowing so hard that you feel like everything is going to blow away. If I were a flatlander (Kansas and other places with similar terrain), everything really might blow away in a nice tornado. As it is, I've only ever lived in the Arizona desert as well as the nearby mountains, so a tornado is very unlikely. Allthesameanyhow, it feels like we're all going to blow away like the nannies in Mary Poppins.

The Agrarian Times

2009-03-20T13:04:00.004-07:00

One of my favorite bloggers, Phelan, has a letter to the President that I think people should read. It's really great, and while you're there, go ahead and poke around the rest of the site.

I'm including the definition to make this post longer. Click on the little sound icon to hear how it's supposed to be pronounced.

a⋅grar⋅i⋅an [uh-grair-ee-uhn] –adjective

1.	relating to land, land tenure, or the division of landed property: agrarian laws.

2.	pertaining to the advancement of agricultural groups: an agrarian movement.

3.	composed of or pertaining to farmers: an agrarian co-op.

4.	rural; agricultural.

5.	growing in fields; wild: an agrarian plant.

–noun

6.	a person who favors the equal division of landed property and the advancement of agricultural groups.

Spring is in the Air!

2009-03-20T11:00:00.008-07:00

I have decided to stick to Blogger when it comes to reading other blogs. I have a very difficult time reading back entries on places like Wordpress. It doesn't make any sense to me and I end up getting very lost.

A friend of mine has stayed over every night this week except Sunday night and Wednesday night. Normally I love having visitors and everything, but these specific friends think they don't have to knock on the door when they show up or ask if they can have a specific item of food before they eat it or ask to use the computer. Instead, they just do. I'm not being stingy. I just like people to ask permission. Most likely, I will give permission, but I still think it's good manners to ask and to knock instead of just doing it because you know that the answer would probably be yes if you asked.

I am starting a compost pile. So far I have only found two designs that I can make. For the first, you make a wooden box with three sides. The fourth, open, side is made so you gradually add board as your pile grows. For the second design, it is just chicken wire arranged in a circle.

The chicken wire design would be easier to make but the wooden box might be more durable. I just don't know. I have considered a free standing pile, but I've decided that the drawbacks (like animals messing with it and the vast quantities of wind we have around here) far outweigh the positives (i.e., no time spent breaking my fingers and cursing the building materials and my idiotic mistakes). So the free-standing pile is out. I suppose something like stacked tires or cinderblocks are also options except then I am faced with the daunting task of finding supplies, while the board and chickenwire ideas I already have the supplies for.

Also, my garden is about ready to be mixed up with some nice, tasty mulch. After laying fallow all year and with no one walking on it, the mostly-clay that is my soil is NOT compacted and is, in fact, quite loose and therefore will be at least a little less backbreaking to till by hand (by hand, rather than by rototiller because this spot has never been gardened and probably has more than a few boulders waiting to munch on a nice, expensive machine). I can't wait to plant!

I've cleared out the tumbleweeds that have grown up right next to the fence and I have yet to pull the weeds that are just starting to grow. I also need to start some of the seeds SOON. It never frosts after Mothers' Day around here and so I have until sometime in May to get my garden ready. Some things you plant a few weeks before the last frost date and so those will go in sometime in April.

Now for some celebration. Since today is the official first day of spring and spring is in the air, I am celebrating. As much as I love snow and cold, I am ready for a change, and so I am celebrating the nice weather for a change.

HAPPY SPRING!
(and Equinox...)

Pictorial Springfest with images from Photobucket (a few of the pictures are of my area):

Oh guess what! I've noticed that a lot of people are frustrated with how slowly Blogger uploads pictures. I have high speed and it was slow for me, so I can only imagine how annoying it must be for those who have dial-up. I have since found a better way. Photobucket uploads faster than Blogger, so I upload the photos there and then copy and paste the html code into my post where I want it. And the pictures stay online in case you want to use them again in other posts. You might try it and see if it works for you.

We moved our trampoline from the back yard to the front. Tonight, we're having a movie and game night with everyone. I can't wait for the fun summer will bring!

Getting Out of a Rut

2009-02-28T14:19:00.003-07:00

I've been feeling really lazy lately. Normally, I can read good homesteading blogs for hours, but currently, I am having a hard time concentrating. It's annoying because even books (that addiction of mine) are confusing. So I've been playing games on the computer. You know, all those fun RPGs. Runescape. Pirates of the Carribean Online. And then plenty of puzzle-like point-and-clicks. I really like the Dream Chronicles only now that I've played the first two, I have to sit around and wait for the third one. I also have been having some fun with Escape Room games. I like them but I sorta suck. And I sometimes have to look for hints. I don't like walkthroughs because they give away too much. I like hints that get me looking at something I never considered before. I can figure out what needs to be done. Geez! It's just how that sometimes gets me.

I am slow with the homesteading stuff. I don't want animals at a time in my life when I'm changing so much, so that limits what I can do already. I can mostly just do plants (which I am doing, but way too slowly for my get-up-go-do-now-now-now personality). I also am doing the homemaking thing or whatever. I am crocheting little red and green squares to put together for an afghan. Or I was crocheting little squares...I did two and then couldn't find any scissors to finish it off so I could do another. Then I found the scissors and was no longer interested. Now I'm re-interested and I can't find the book with the pattern. Grrrr!

Then I discovered a great cookie recipe and I took pics and everything for this blog only now I can't find the camera! And I don't want to do it without pictures and I'm too lazy to go hunting for them.

I'm just getting over being really sick and so I am making excuses not to do anything and all in all I'm just procrastinating all over the place to the tune of the New Age internet Radio station I happen to be addicted to.

I am going to go to a bunch of social places (like church) and I am going to do some chores (make my bed, wash some clothes, etc) to get me going and out of this layabout sick person dealy.

And then I am going to go do something fun.

What do you do to get out of a rut?

DeliberateLife.com

2009-02-26T17:11:00.003-07:00

I have just caught up on a new blog which I am now adding to my following list. It's called DeliberateLife.com: Killing Apathy for the Fun of It. Nic is working on living a life that is a circle of life rather than a comsumerism tunnel. She has a husband a little younger (I think about 3 yrs) and two little girls, ages around 3 and 5 and she's expecting a third. The oldest little girl, is high-functioning autistic (Asperger's).

The blog is brilliantly written with a totally new look on how life is and why and what we're actually here for. I swear it's worth the time to go back and read starting from Day 1.

On a sadder note, I was reading a blog: Happily Housepoor and I was slowly getting closer to the future, and then I took a break and when I came back a few weeks later, it was gone! So sad. Even if she chose to stop blogging, did she have to delete the blog? I'm sure she had good reason, but it is still sad to see a blog I enjoy disappear.

Catch-All Catch-Up Post

2009-02-25T22:05:00.007-07:00

I have been so sick for the past five or six days. Fever, coughing fits, headache, weakness all over, lightheadedness, constant sleep, the works. I'm better now except for small bouts of lightheadedness, a voracious appetite (I am never hungry), and a craving for peppermint tea and lemons.

I try to post at least once a week (my computer day is Friday) but last Friday, I was so sick, even being on the internet was awful. But here I am. I had planned on doing some intensive physical labor on my someday garden and I have a recipe I want to post as soon as I find the camera with the pics on it.

So far, I have been trying to get a compost pile going. It takes three months for compost to mature, I'm told, and that is about when I need it to go on plants and seedlings. So I'm trying to build such a pile rather quickly. I have a little green discarded wastebasket on the front porch into which all my candidates for compost status go. It's not very full, but I am working on it trying very hard not to blame illness for not doing more.

I don't have much more to say and indeed should stop speaking a 19th century British/contemporary American English hybrid. It sounds strange even to my own ears.

I hope I snap out of it.

Learning About Herbal Remedies

2009-02-11T22:18:00.003-07:00

I don't know if I want to start now or if I want to do it later, but eventually I want to learn about herbs. My mom knows a lot and she has a couple of shelves in the library full of herb books. There's John Lust's Herb Book. I liked that one especially because there's a section about herbal folklore. And I have a thing for folklore. The whole anthropology/sociology thing is fascinating. People are just so...weird...in some ways they're predictable, but not as a race. Not really. A lot of people like to destroy and harm. We call it a "consumer society," and I think it hurts the earth when we don't manage it correctly. A lot of Christians seem to think that "God made the earth for our exploitation." I can't hold with that because in Genesis is says God put man on the earth as a caretaker. A caretaker is different from a rapist.

But I'm getting off topic. Dr. Christopher is supposed to have some good books but I have difficulty knowing where to start. But start I must. And suggestions on where to begin are begged for lol.

P.S. It is painful to drive with your dad, mom, and little brother in the car. The yell at me what to do (which I mostly ignore) and they yell at each other for yelling at me. It's distracting. And my dad tells me to hug the yellow line over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and OVER and OVER and OVER again!!!

Garden Update

2009-02-10T21:25:00.002-07:00

The first step to getting my garden up is to get it ready for planting. The fence is already up, as I before mentioned, but there are some other things I need to do before I can plant in May. The first thing is the ginormous bush smack in the middle. I could leave it there, but there's at least 45 square feet of garden space that it covers...plus most of the bush is dead. So the bush will be my first project. Digging it up and removing it, along with some of the smaller weeds.

Next, I need to improve the soil. It would have been best to start this last fall so that it would have time to break down and whatever. I could list a couple of pages of excuses, including it not occurring to me, but there's really no point. I didn't do it, and so I need to do it now. Our dirt is almost totally clay. Hard as a rock if you get it wet and step on it a lot. Then nothing grows on it and you have a footpath. So, from what I've read about good soil being equal parts sand, silt, and clay, I'm going to need to bring in extra soil. Luckily, the nearest town has a large creek that runs through it with lots of white sand which no one cares if you take some.

Another thing about our soil is it's red color. Not red as in "iron-rich," red as in "virgin soil." No real anything to feed plants. Luckily my garden spot was where our last batch of chickens lived, so there's chicken manure that's been there since last summer. This is good, because chicken manure is high in Nitrogen which would burn most plants if I put fresh straight on. Also, the nearest town has a dairy and they sell their (semi-fresh) manure from their cows for $20 a tractor scoop. My mother is trying to find someone with a truck who will help her get three scoops for her garden. When I get money next, I'll give her some of it and then get her to go get some for her garden and mine. If I remind her often enough, she might actually do it.

I'll probably try my hand at a compost pile next. It might take some time to get my family to put their plant wastes in a bucket to go out to compost, but it's a good idea, and, anyways, I want to try it.

That's my plan for this next bit. There's still plenty to do after all of the above is completed, but if I try everything all at once, I'll overwhelm myself and then I won't do any of it. :)

Think Outside the Bottle Pledge

2009-02-09T17:31:00.004-07:00

~~You may have noticed~~ In my sidebar is a brand new icon to clutter up my blog: "Think Outside the Bottle." I have never seen the point in having water bottled, it's nasty, the bottles just go to a landfill (poluting the earth), and we have delicious local water that's ours free for the taking. Still, the pledge lists other, bigger, better reasons to stop drinking bottled water, and I so I have pledged this pledge:

Think Outside the Bottle Pledge

Because water is a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit;

Because bottled water corporations are changing the very way people think about water and undermining people's confidence in public water systems;

Because up to 40% of bottled water in the U.S. and Canada is sourced from municipal tap water;

Because some bottlers have run over communities' concerns and the environment when they extract water and build bottling plants to get local spring and ground water;

Because bottled water travels many miles from the source, results in the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels, and contributes to the billions of plastic bottles ending up in our landfills;

Because worldwide there is a need for investments in public water systems to ensure equal access to water, a key ingredient for prosperity and health for all people; and

Because solutions to ensuring water as a fundamental human right require people acting together and standing up for public water systems,

I pledge to Think Outside the Bottle, which means:

Opting for public tap water over bottled water; and

Supporting the efforts of local officials who prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits.

Signed by:
Gemini

Cauldron Ridge Farm

2009-02-09T17:22:00.002-07:00

From there I went in search of a new blog to devour. And I found Gina's "Cauldron Ridge Farm." I read it all. From her move to Cauldron Ridge Farm, through two different jobs, graduating with a degree in entomology (that is what you call a degree in bugs, yes?) to her move to yet another farm and the ups and downs of everyday life. She works full time, plus does the farm thing with her two little boys and husband. It's amazing.

Dancing in A Field of Tansy

2009-02-09T17:10:00.004-07:00

When I caught up with "A Homesteading Neophyte," I went in search of new blogs that had quality content. I had to get my fix, you see. lol

That's when I found "Dancing in a Field of Tansy." I caught up on that one faster because there are not so many posts. She is artistic and crafty from what I've seen, and she has goats. I like goats. I grew up on goats' milk from our very own French Alpine/Saanen crosses. Some of them were nasty, some of them were gentle but didn't know how to nurse babies, so we fed her kids with a couple of calf bottles and kept them in a box in our living room. Some of them died. We ate some. As a child, I would sit on my parents' bed under the cooler where I couldn't hear anything. Then, after it was done, I came out and watched them bleed the goat. They hung it on a ginormous mesquite tree we parked our van under.

One goat got her horns stuck in the chainlink fence, crying for her mama. We didn't get to her fast enough (and nobody called a vet after the fact), so she went through the rest of her life with her nick twisted sideways.

But I'm off topic again...Tansy has goats, yes, and I like goats.

A New Tradition; A Homesteading Neophyte

2009-02-09T16:56:00.003-07:00

I have decided to do a "Blog of the Week" type of thing. Except I'm not reliable enough to make sure I post about a blog I like each week. So instead I am going to post about blogs that interest me whenever it occurs to me to do so. It's kind of the way I live my life. Do it when it occurs to me and hope it occurs to me.

Today I am posting about the very first homesteading blog I ever discovered. I found it last summer. After I read thirty years worth of back issues from Mother Earth News and wanted to know how people homesteaded now (rather than in the seventies and eighties). Well, I googled all sorts of phrases, trying to find the one that would hit the jackpot. "Rural Living" was out "Country Living" brought up another blank. Phrase after phrase, I searched; using every phrase I could think of that would describe what I was looking for. Finally, I found the right one: "homesteading." Bingo! And best of all, I discovered there were blogs that were worth the space they took up in cyberspace. Homesteading blogs. Until then I had only found dumb ones written by dumb kids who wanted to tell the world about their alcohol addictions and how they cut themselves...as though anyone cared.

Well, I found Phelan's "A Homesteading Neophyte" and, starting from her first post ever, I read all the years of experience buried deep in the archives. It was like reading a good book that never ended. And better yet, it's happening now instead of 1979 or 1983 or 1995. That's something that's important, that it's possible now.

Beginning Steps to My First Garden

2009-02-08T21:03:00.003-07:00

Last night I had a lovely dream about sheep. I dreamed I had eight sheep and five of them were pregnant. And they had cute little lambs. It was a homesteading dream, or else I wouldn't have mentioned it in this blog.

You probably know from my blog description that I am a teenager who wants to be a homesteader. If you know what homesteading is, you probably know that most teenagers (at least the ones I know) want to be fashion designers and doctors and actors and authors and veterinarians and brain surgeons and singers, and artists, and archeologists. All those subjects fascinate me, yes, but I want to be a homesteader. I want cows and sheep goats and chickens and a garden and cats and dogs and children on a nice size piece of land in the Rocky Mountains where I can live a life that makes sense to me. Right now I'm learning as much as I can about cooking and sewing and crocheting and other domestic chores as well as more homesteady things like gardening and animal husbandry. Most of my experience in the homesteady things up until now has been book learning and blog reading.

I am still working on that, but now I have decided to plant a garden. I figure now is a good time to start when I have a ton of time on my hands (and I'm graduating this spring even though I just turned seventeen last month, so I'll have even more time on my hands, soon). I don't want to do animals just yet because I'm going to do college and and the job thing before I do the homesteading thing and it's a little difficult to take care of a dog when you're busy with college and all that fun stuff. At least you could leave it home and ask your mom to take care of it (I don't have a dog, just so you know).

My mom really doesn't know the first thing about chickens. She likes cats and tiny dogs. The one time I had her take care of my chickens (because I was at youth conference for four days), she didn't give them any water and they started eating their eggs to compensate. So any animals I have from now on will be at a time I can take care of them. Now back to the subject I'm writing this post on: gardening.

Now is about right to start doing the garden thing. There's never a frost after Mother's Day (ironically, it has sometimes snowed for the last time on Mother's Day and then all melted away and been sunny and just like spring the next day, but it has never broken the rule), so anything I want to start indoors needs to be planted in March or April. Therefore planning is in February (or January if you're really organized and motivated, which I am not under normal circumstances).

I am doing a 20'x30' garden this year. I figure it's a good size. I'll be able to have some variety but not be overwhelmed. Plus it's already fenced off with four feet of chicken wire above the ground and 6-8" buried. And these are the plants I want to grow:

Tomatoes
Cucumber
Zucchini
Onions
Garlic
Herbs (haven't decided which yet, but definitely the kind for pizza/spaghetti sauce)
Carrots
Lettuce
Some berries
Maybe some flowers
etc

This is far from an exhaustive list. It's just kind of a general idea, I may add some plants, I may take away some plants, I'll probably add more details and whatnot. You'll see. I'll post my plans as they develop and become more specific and specialized.

Multi-Species

2009-01-23T16:14:00.002-07:00

My cat looks like a sheep. I'm serious. She looks like a sheep. I used to think she looked like an owl until I saw a picture of some sheep at Happily Housepoor's post here. Look at the sheep in this picture. She seriously reminds me of my cat.

Green Meme #3

2009-01-21T18:32:00.005-07:00

Guidelines:

1) Link to Green Meme Bloggers. (use image if you like)
2) Link back to whoever tagged you. (no need to wait to be tagged!)
3) Include meme number
4) Include these guidelines in your post
5) Tag 3 other green bloggers.

Green Meme #3

Are you keeping your temperature (heating/cooling) systems on low? If you have radiators are they fitted with thermostats?
Yeah. We keep the thermostat on about 68. I don't even have my heater on ever now that it's stopped snowing and we're into that part of the winter where it feels like warm even though it's January.
If yes to the above, what do you to keep warm/cool without resorting to turning up those numbers? Just open a window.
Do you turn your fridge temperature down when it has less items in it? No. We keep it down a little, though.
Do you unplug unused small appliances? Yes. We keep them in the cupboard and only plug them in when we use them. Except the blender.
Do you switch off rather than leave on standby; TV/computer/DVD player/etc? Yes, we do. The computer plugs into a switch we turn off but the TV and DVD player just plug into the wall. And the keyboard.
Do you own (or will you purchase in the future) energy-efficient (star-rated) home appliances? All our appliances are brand new. I don't think we'll be buying anything new soon.
Do you have any green goals/hopes for the next few months? Not really. I've got other goals that take precedence.

I'm sick of tagging people. So if anyone bothers to read this (i.e., you) and decides they want to be tagged...well I tagged you even if you didn't know it.

Damsels in Distress

2009-01-18T11:56:00.004-07:00

So yesterday afternoon I was over at my friend's house playing DDR and her boyfriend called about 3pm. Well she was worried because he never calls during the day, only at night and, furthermore, he was supposedly quail hunting with his dad. She tried to call him back, but she couldn't get a hold of him. Three and a half hours later, he called back. He and his dad were stuck in the mud about fifteen miles away from us, he said. So she, the worried girlfriend got her dad to start up their big diesel four-door truck to go rescue the Damsels in Distress. I, the country girl who loves adventure, decided to come along (plus my I didn't wanna go home, although my sister did). We packed two ginormous chains and two shovels and set off with 40 miles worth of gas in the tank. Fifteen miles in, no boyfriend and his dad. Twenty miles in, no boyfriend and his dad. I used my cell phone (which was going dead) to ask him for more details. They're on road number five. Okay. So we're on the right track. Twenty-five miles in, and it's too late to go back and go into town for more gas.

Thirty five miles in, we found boyfriend and dad. They were on a hill eating jerky and sitting around a fire they'd made (that's country people for you!). We nearly got stuck ourselves on the way in. They'd never made it to where they were going to hunt. When we stopped where their truck was stuck, boyfriend came barreling down the hillside worried we're not going to recognize the truck just because it's his dad's, not his. It was dark, like eleven o'clock at night at this point. We attached the chains (and the cable boyfriend and dad had) between the lil truck and our big one. We got in the big truck and boyfriend got in the little truck. We started dragging. We were up on the side where it wasn't so muddy and were pulling from that direction. We slid into the mud pit. Boyfriend got out of truck and said that the keys weren't in the truck like he thought and so he went to go get them from his dad.

Boyfriend got keys and his dad came down. They got in the little truck and we dragged them out. We had them go in front of us in case they got stuck again. They started off down the road going twice as fast as we did coming up and we followed behind them. No one got stuck because it's so late that the roads have frozen over and so it's all good. We ran out of gas ten miles from home (twenty from the nearest town). Boyfriend and his dad came back to rescue us, in turn. Friend called her first cousin once removed (who is eighteen) and asked him if he had any diesel fuel. My phone had been dying this whole time and chose right then to bite the dust. So then she switched over to boyfriend's phone which was also dying but had more juice (probably because it's newer).

A round of phone calls were made and in the end boyfriend's dad and friend's dad decided to go into town in the little truck and buy gas. Boyfriend, friend and I sat in the truck and listened to an iPod that's plugged into the iTrip. We talked about random stuff and then a medium white truck came up the road. There was a misunderstanding and two men from friend's house thought that they were supposed to come rescue us and came bearing gas. They put the gas in the truck and showed boyfriend (who was sitting in the driver's seat) how to prime the gears or whatever it's called so that it wouldn't mess up after being all empty.

Boyfriend drove the big truck down the road with medium truck behind us. Then came little truck towards us with people's dads inside with more gas. We all pulled off to the side and everyone got out and stood around in silence. Then we all got back into our various trucks to head home. Boyfriend and dad in little white truck, followed by friend, friend's dad, and I in big white truck, with two men in medium white truck bringing up the rear.

When we finally got home, everyone was asleep except my lil sis (thank goodness, I hate my evil stepfather and my mom just refuses to accept it). I told lil sis all about our adventure, told her she missed out and went to bed.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-01-12T15:14:00.004-07:00

I'm seventeen.

I wonder what I'm in for this year?

Something Useful

2008-12-16T11:50:00.002-07:00

I figure I may as well post something useful. To start, maybe I'll talk about chickens. When I was little (before my mom left my dad, but after we moved out to Spear Ranch), our neightbors had chickens. One day we had no food because my dad did not do things like give my mom money to buy food. So my mother begged a chicken off of them. They were kind enough to oblige and even to butcher it (the killing part).

Then my mom dipped it in boiling water to get rid of the feathers. I remember all this clearly, regardless of the part where I was between the ages of two and six. It's after that where I can't remember what we did next. I know the feathers were removed and put in a plastic grocery bag because either my older sister or my mom (I can't remember which) was going to do something with them. Of course they just went in the bag and put under the counter. There they stayed until they smelled so awful that they had to be thrown out.

The feet went to my best friend's cousins (her Grandpa was the one who gave us the chicken). The bird was gutted and who knows what we did with them because I can't remember. I remember removing the gullet and my mom sliced it open and showed us the beans, rice, dog food, etc that was inside (the birds were free range and so ate all sorts of things). And then we had some food.

When I was little (after my mom left my dad, but before we moved anywhere else), my dad had chickens of his own which someone hatched out for him. I don't remember the man's name, but he had a ginormous incubator (one of those commercial ones that looks like a refrigerator) in the back of his store (not a feed store, it was called "Treasures and Trinkets" and it sold all sorts of little 'treasures' and trinkets--like the name says). The chickens were Araucanas which are my dad's favorite birds, I think. He kept them in a little coop with his pigeons.

When I was about twelve, my dad took me and my little brother and sister to Mesa, AZ for a pageant. And there we stopped at a feed store and bought some chicks (Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks). We kept them in Motel 6's tub. My mother was pissed because we had nowhere for them to live. When they got old enough to be outside, my dad built a little coop which we kept in the only fenced part of the yard, and let them run around. My mom had someone butcher two of them and we processed them. I got mad at her because they were our chickens and she decided to eat two of them without asking our permission. We kept my dog out in their yard on a chain and stake. One night we let my dog run loose to work off extra energy and someone shot him and he died. Soon after, something ate all the chickens.

Then, last year, someone was getting rid of their chickens and even though we'd told them we didn't want them, they brought them over anyway. Long story short, I spent several hundred dollars on their fenced yard as well as feeders and waterers and they were all very sick and slowly dying off one by one (I told my mom I didn't want hand-me-down chickens for that very reason), so I gave them to my dad. All the birds died over there instead. And I didn't get the feeders or waterers back because my dad and his evil fiancee broke up (and her birds were kept at her house). Sad thing was, those were the only chickens we had that I even liked.

In the future, I plan to have chickens, but not until I'm on my own and can make the decisions and buy the birds from a hatchery, etc...

Talk About Snow!

2008-12-16T11:35:00.002-07:00

We really have been getting a lot of snow. Way more than we normally do at this time of year. Yesterday we got four inches of snow and then we got three more inches last night. The thing about this area, though, is that after it finishes snowing, most of it melts away within a couple days. Usually by the end of the week, the only signs it even snowed are the mudholes we call our roads and a little bit in the shade and on the north sides of people's houses. Anyways, so it's already melting away. I took more pictures and made another slideshow (I just know you've been looking forward to it, JK. Don't be alarmed, this one is only seventeen pictures, instead of thirty something).

More Snow!

2008-12-15T17:24:00.004-07:00

It had snowed a ton more today! I guess the Deity who rules over nature read my last post in which I said we didn't get serious snows because there's fully four inches out there and it's still snowing! One of the loser local schools let school out. Honestly! Four inches and the school closes down? WT*? Whatever. So I took a bunch more pics and made a slideshow at Slide to put on here so you don't have to scroll through a ginormous post (I have ~~thirty-seven~~ thirty six pictures in the slideshow). ~~The song is one I really like called "Song for a Winter's Night" by Sarah McLachlan.~~

Note: I originally had a song as part of the slideshow. Sadly, I find it annoying when a song starts playing without permission when I visit a page, so I have edited the post so that it's the exact same slideshow, but with no music to annoy (even if the song is still really good...).

Green Meme #2

2008-12-14T15:12:00.005-07:00

No one tagged me, but I like to do these Memes so, yeah

Guidelines:

1) Link to Green Meme Bloggers. (use image if you like)
2) Link back to whoever tagged you. (no need to wait to be tagged!)
3) Include meme number
4) Include these guidelines in your post
5) Tag 3 other green bloggers.

Green Meme #2

1. Do you use baking soda toothpaste or baking soda shampoo? If not, would you consider it?

My mother uses those. I have tried toothpaste from Arm & Hammer that had baking soda in it, and I really like it, but I am not super-interested in baking soda toothpaste because of flavor (I know, I'm spoiled, LOL). Someday I will try baking soda shampoo. But not until I can get over the part where I like my hair to smell like ~~chemicals~~ shampoo.

2. Do you make any home cleaning products?

My mom mixes ammonia with water for disinfectant purposes. Does that count?

3. What is your top green issue at the moment?

Garbage reduction. We use a lot of single-use items and I really don't like how much we contribute to the local landfill.

4. Given unlimited cash, what is on your fantasy green wishlist?

Solar/wind power!!!

5. Have you implemented any new green act/behaviour/product this month?

I've been keeping the heater off a lot.

Okay, I tag A Homesteading Neophyte, Dancing in a Field of Tansy and Homesteading the Back Forty.

It Snowed, Yay!

2008-12-14T13:53:00.007-07:00

It snowed! The first snow of the year was October 11th. Way early. The second snow was December 9th. And it snowed again last night! These are all pictures that I took this morning after everyone else left for church. Our house:

Across the street:

The part of the yard above the septic tank:
The view to the east from the porch:
The view to the west from the porch:
Usually we don't get any serious snows (as in: several inches) before January so it's not much of a surprise that none of this season's snows have been more than maybe an inch. *pouts* I love snow. No one else around here (except my seminary teacher who used to live in Montana and Minnesota) even really likes the snow at all, it seems. I know my mom and a friend's grandfather absolutely hate it. Grrrr....

Tommy (the--neutered--Tomcat):
Lickerish (my sister named her after the candy, but spelled it phonetically because she's weird):
Lady (rescued from some people who were just going to dump her out in the middle of nowhere...grrrr...I hate it when people do that!):

Anggi (as in short for Angela/Angel....another victim of my sister's strange spellings):

All in all today was okay, except my mom has been preaching religion at me again. *covers ears* La la la!!! I can't hear you!

Parade of Lights

2008-12-14T09:41:00.004-07:00

Friday night my seminary class was in the parade of lights in a nearby town. We had a red, horse drawn wagon-thing pulled by Shetland mules:

The wagon and mules belong to my seminary teacher and her husband. He was Santa Claus. She was Mrs. Claus. My sister and a friend were Christmas trees, and the rest of us were Santa's elves. For my costume, I wore a long sleeved red shirt with a dark green sweater over it. The sweater's sleeves were shorter than the red shirt's sleeves, so the red shirt showed and it looked awesome. Then I wore a green hat with red fringe, a green collar, black leggings, and brown boots with white fake fur trim.

The Story of Stuff

2008-12-13T14:10:00.006-07:00

So I'm reading through all of Cauldron Ridge's blog entries from day one in order to get caught up and all that, and in this post, she links to a video about our doomed consumer society called The Story of Stuff. (Cauldron Ridge got it from Mommy Mommy Land's blog, who got it from someone else's blog, blah blah blah!!!)

The video is insightful and entertaining with plenty of factoids, and isn't boring at all...not once during the twenty minutes, did I consider doing something else with my time. Watch it! It's totally worth it!

I have a little logo you can put on your blog to link to The Story of Stuff. Here it is:

CODE:

National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

2008-12-12T12:43:00.004-07:00

I have read a lot about this from my fellow bloggers and I have decided to post an entry about it. What is NAIS? Well, it was supposed to help big beef producers sell to more exclusive markets. Too bad some idiots (dare I say 'USDA'?), decided that it should apply to ALL livestock owners. so want us to sign our small farm/homesteading animals up and give them numbers and tags, therefore making them part of a national herd. "All livestock animal movements will be tracked, logged and reported to the government."(NoNAIS) This would be fine for the big mass producing factories who treat their animals in a less-than-humane way. But what about us who own horses and rabbits as pets...or those of us who homestead? We can't afford this type off mass-identification and, furthermore, we don't want big government peering over our shoulders and expecting us to explain our every move. We don't want to have to file a ton of paperwork should--God forbid--a neighbor's dog kill one chicken or even a few. And, did you know, the USDA can come in and exterminate all your animals should they have cause to believe that one of your animals is (or was) sick?

From NoNAIS:

"There are no exceptions - even small farms that sell direct to local consumers will be required to pay the fees and file all the paper work on all their animals. Even horse, llama and other pet owners will be required to participate in NAIS. Homesteaders who raise their own meat and grandma with her one egg hen will also have to register their homes as ‘farm premises’ and obtain a Premise ID, tag all their animals and submit all the paperwork and fees. Absurd? Yes - There are no exceptions under the current NAIS plan. The USDA has slipped this plan in the back door without any legislation. This is going to be very expensive and guess who is going to pay for it in higher food prices… You!"

I have two links to NoNAIS you can put on your blog or website to help spread the word about this.

CODE:

CODE:

Green Meme #1

2008-12-11T14:45:00.006-07:00

Guidelines:

1) Link to Green Meme Bloggers. (use image if you like)
2) Link back to whoever tagged you. (no need to wait to be tagged!)
3) Include meme number
4) Include these guidelines in your post
5) Answer questions
6) Tag 3 other green bloggers.

Green Meme #1
1) Name two motivations for being green?
a) Because I care about the earth and hate to see her treated so poorly.
b) I can't think of another.

2) Name 2 eco-UNfriendly items you refuse to give up?
a) At the moment I am unable to give up tampons and related. Eventually, I will use one of those little Diva Cups, but until then. And I have yet to find a good replacement for toilet paper.
b) Until I can find something that will remove hair permanently, I will continue to use razors.

3) Are you at peace with or do you feel guilty about number 2?
I'm okay with a, but b gets me. Still, I would love to find viable replacements.

4) What are you willing to change but feel unable to/stuck with/unsure how to go about it?
I really don't know how to go about getting my family on the boat. I am still a teen, so I don't have any authority in my house, and my mom thinks going "green" is some new age/secret combination/bureaucratic brainwashing.

5) Do you know your carbon footprint for your home? If so, is it larger/smaller than your national average? (http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx)
It's smaller: "0.12 tonnes" according to the site

6) What's eco-frustrating and/or eco-fantastic about where you live?
Frustrating: the dead car lots that are so popular around here as landscaping features. People like to dump their garbage out in the middle of nature. And there's a landfill less than three miles from here.
Fantastic: People grow gardens and orchards.

7) Do you eat local/organic/vegetarian/forage/grow your own?
We buy eggs that are brown, vegetarian fed, with no hormones or antibiotics. And when we buy chicken, we buy the free-range kind. Also, my mom grows herbs and some veggies.

8) What do you personally find the most challenging in being green?
The price and my family! I am very limited financially and my family doesn't get it.

9) Do you have a green confession?
You mean like how although I consider myself "green," I have different ideas about what "green" means?

10) Do you have the support of family and/or friends?
Not really they think that it's all government brainwashing.

Okay, I tag: Tiny Farm Blog, Diamond Cut Life, and Earthwoman

Vaccinations/Immunizations

2008-12-11T14:28:00.002-07:00

If/when I have children, I am never going to vaccinate them. Why not? Well, because I wouldn't dare. When I was a baby, my mother took me in to get "immunized" and I had a very violent reaction. It is unknown as to what caused the reaction. Was it hereditary? my mother and grandmother were vaccinated only a few times because they were very sick as children. Was it just an allergy to one of the set? Was it an allergy to one of the sickening ingredients? As I said, no one is really sure. Luckily, except for the episode I escaped unscathed. I don't have autism. I have had to deal with depression and OCD, but those are probably more related to other things in my life.

I will not vaccinate my children because I do not know if whatever it was that caused the severe reaction will be passed on to them, and I'm not willing to take the risk.

Another reason, which is less personally related is a few things I found out. a) the outbreak of swine flu in the seventies was directly linked to the vaccination for swine flu. b) the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1812 may have also been linked to the c) AIDS may have been brought to our country from the vaccines (monkey parts are/have been used in some vaccines and are carriers of the disease).

See "How One Wicked Nation Can Kill Billions Around the World--With One Lie!" by Dr. Lorraine Day, M.D. The part about swine flu is pretty far down there since the main article is about Bird Flu. The quickest way to skip to the swine flu part is to press Ctrl+F which will open up a little box to help you search. Type in "swine flu" in the box.

Horse Grooming

2008-12-10T13:43:00.004-07:00

So Friday, I went over to my frienemy's house. She has two horses (mustangs) and a mule named Orville (as in Orville Redenbacher--did I spell that right?--Popcorn). The mule wouldn't let Jessica catch him so we just groomed the horses. First we groomed the buckskin. I can't remember his name but it's a type of beer (her parents are like that). He's a little skittish and so I walked him around in a circle while Blondie (that's her nickname and it annoys her lol) moved a pile of wire left over from when they were putting up the fences. They had these two horse-brushes (can't remember what they're called), but one got lost and somebody left the other one out so Blondie got out this...thing...that she hoped was a horse-brush. And then there was a thing for the mane (how come I can't remember any names today?!). We took turns brushing the body and the mane. We didn't the best we could with the horse being a little nervous about being touched. Then we returned whatzisname (starts with a 'P') to his corral.

Blondie tried to catch Orville (the mule) so we could groom him. No success. So then we went on to the other horse. He had just been given to them a few days earlier. A family friend didn't have any money to feed him, so he gave him to them. Blondie named him Sasparilla. It doesn't fit at all. But then neither does "Cocoa" which is what her little sisters named him. He's a handsome guy although he's not very tall (maybe 11 hands) and his ribs are showing. He's got a shaggy black mane (or he did before Blondie took it upon herself to cut his hair). He's very well-behaved and enjoyed the attention he was getting.

Now I have to rant: Why does Blondie pretend she knows more about horses than she actually does? Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the only correct terms I've heard for how a horse moves are: walk, trot, canter/lope, and gallop (and a couple of times I have heard "jog"). Well Blondie is trying to sound smart to some people, and she starts talking about "running her horse." Of course, I jump in and tell her you can't run a horse (and I mean it in two different ways). So she says yes you can and eventually reveals that this is the term for how a horse moves when you go faster then a gallop. WTF??? Yeah. And my other complaint: when we groomed her horses, she didn't bother to comb out the horses' tails or to clean their hooves.

Thanksgiving Stove

2008-11-20T12:03:00.004-07:00

Well my mom removed some of the rust on the stove and then gave up and applied the blacking. Most of the stove is fine except that around the chimney there is still a lot of rust and it looks very yuck. It doesn't help, I guess that my mom is the antonym of "perfectionist" and I could almost be the synonym for "perfectionist."

Thanksgiving is coming up. Every year each of us children take turns cooking Thanksgiving Dinner (when we were younger, we had a little help from mom). This year it's my sister's turn. And so of course she gets to cook. Every year it was her turn she would start to cook but then would run off and abandon the meal before the turkey was even warm. My mother would then be left to cook by herself and so she would enlist me and together we would finish the meal. This year (after slaughtering tradition; she got a ham instead of a turkey!), she announced that all she was supposed to do was plan the menu and that we were the ones that would cook. Excuse me?! So now that she has abandoned even a pretense of responsibility, my mother will now be cooking. And that most likely means pie with no sugar.... :*(

Homestead.org and Sherri Dixon

2008-11-16T15:32:00.006-07:00

So today I've been looking around on Homestead.org for updates since I've last been on the site. There are only a few new articles but that's okay because this site has literally dozens of other articles on everything from goats to gardens to "we did it" stories. My favorite author on there is probably Sherri Dixon. She has a sense of humor that I love. Look at these articles by her: The Unsung Benefits of Homesteading, The Unexpected Menace, Barn Cats, Keeping the Homestead Dream Alive, Paying Attention, Drawing a Circle in the Sand: Teaching Awareness to a Consumer Society, Hair-Raising Homestead Haircuts, (Living in the Sticks) and the Single Girl, Acronyms to Live By, and Livestock Guard Dogs.

Other Articles by Sherri Dixon: Don't Quit Your Day Job, Black Thumb: Helpful Hints for the Cultivationally Challenged, Raising Chickens from Scratch, Homeschooling for Homesteaders, Natural Building Colloquium, Gotta Get Ger, Farm Dogs: See Spot Work, Successful Transplants: Uprooting Your Urban Offspring, The Importance of Being Surveyed, In Defense of the Weedlot, Mice: Scourge of the Homestead, Using a Midwife, Dairy Goats, For Sale By Owner; Needs a Little Work, Earth Stewardship 101: Part 1-Part 2, and Cutting the Utilical Cord: Part 1-Part 2-Part 3.

Other Helpful Articles: "The Ideal Country Home" by Gene Gerue.

Hi! My name is Gemini.

2008-11-15T01:49:00.010-07:00

I call myself Gemini cuz most of the time I feel like two or more different people and/or personalities contained in one being. I am sixteen. I am homeschooled right now but have been to various other schools: public, Montessori, Charter, etc...and I am a grade ahead so I graduate this year. I L-O-V-E books and may have read more books in the twelve or so years since I learned to read (I taught myself to read around age four or five) than your average adult will in a lifetime. I am fascinated by the occult and dark stuff. I love all kinds of music and can usually find something I like in every genre (even rap and metal and hard rock...shhhh, don't tell. The people who know me would never believe you). I love the Barnes & Noble in the mall (I even have a membership card; ten percent off!). It's like a huge library where you get to keep the books (and it has a café).

I want to do the homesteading thing someday. I am sixteen and trying to decided what to do with my next 60+ years. And I love animals and growing things and the Earth so it all works out. I want to live in Colorado. I chose this state out of the fifty because: a) it's in the Rocky Mountains (well, the western side, anyway) and I want to stay in my home terrain, b) it has four seasons (I don't know what I'd do without my snow) c) it has decent homeschooling laws (I want children someday and I want homeschooling to be a viable option), and d) no red dirt (well, tere is red dirt but not everywhere...I despise red dirt), e) the only other state that fit the above requirements was Idaho, but I chose Colorado as my first choice because I like the sound of the name and there's a lovely song (actually more than one) by John Denver about it (shallow, I know. Idaho still gets "runner-up," though).

I have yet to visit Colorado to confirm it as where I want to live, but I am going to try and do a road trip this summer through Western Colorado (where the Rockies are). I keep dreaming that I visit but it never quite turns out. Last night I dreamed I was going to visit and somehow ended up in the top of Idaho visiting my friend's girlfriend. So weird.

I am still torn between careers: author, veterinarian, and actress.

My homesteading resumé includes: the majority of my first six years of life on a ranch, watching my dad slice up a butchered goat (he also dehorned kids as well as adults), flocks of chickens three and a half separate times, helping dress butchered chickens, bottle-feeding kids (baby goats, not people!), several gardens as a child which I planted, watered and promptly neglected, horseback riding on several occasions, watching my mom de-skin tomatoes, feeding goats and horses and dogs, watching my mom can string beans and pureéd apricot (which we never ate), cooking, cleaning, etc since I was a toddler (my mother never could function very well, so I got to be mom...big burden for a baby), etc...

As a child I loved Louisa May Alcott's books (especially "Little Men" and "Eight Cousins" and "Under the Lilacs"), The Little House on the Prairie series (favorites: "Farmer Boy" and "Little House in the Big Woods"), Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys...all those good ones. My favorite playacting was what I called "Farm." I would go with my imaginary brothers to go bring imaginary cows in from the imaginary pasture. I loved fire-building and I liked to wash my doll clothes in the sink and iron them with a flatiron. I longed to live at Plumfield. I also liked playing "George of the Jungle" with my friend. I would be Ursula and my best friend that was a boy was George. And sometimes we roped our younger siblings into sidekick roles.

I once mad a "nest" in the reeds of a tiny dried up pond and a "nest" in some big bushes. Both nests I pretended to be an eagle. I liked to catch frogs and froglets and keep them. I have had numerous cats and loved them all.

My Grandma was my champion and protector until she died. Then I had to fend for myself. My life has been full of both dark times and times of joy, but I am grateful for what both have taught me.

Pumpkin Pudding

2008-11-14T23:36:00.007-07:00

Update on the Pumpkin Pudding. It works better if you wait until the pumpkin mixture is warm and then stir in the cornstarch a little at a time. And I doubled the recipe when I made it this last time and used 1/3 cup of cornstarch and I am pretty sure that's not the equivalent of twelve Tbsp of cornstarch. I have a suspicion I might be using too much cornstarch, but I don't know how much cornstarch, so if anyone wants to experiment with the recipe, feel free to improve it however you want. Just two requests: post a link back to my blog as where the original recipe was found and also please post your improved recipe in the comment section so I can try it. Thank you.

P.S. I just had a thought. The egg whites would probably mix better if I mixed some of the pumpkin mixture in with it and then added that back to the main pan...

Pudding and Braces

2008-11-13T12:47:00.012-07:00

As of this moment, my mother is outside removing rust from our woodstove so she can put "stove blacking" (that's what she calls it...I think the can has a different name) on it. Then she wants to hire my friend's dad (who is a builder) to install a stovepipe. Then we'll have a woodstove again! I miss keeping warm with fire. This electric heater business is so wrong.

Doesn't the picture make you feel warm just looking at it?

So far, I have been making good on posting regularly. I am quite proud of myself for getting to three posts. I daren't make any promises to continue, though, because I have this thing where when I feel obligated (to myself) to do something, then I put it off indefinitely. So sad.

And yesterday I got the braces on my bottom teeth put on. And they hurt! Why? When I got my top braces put on, it didn't hurt at all! And when I got my expander put on it was only painful for a few hours...oh well. At least after this I'll have straight teeth. I have been subsisting on pudding lately. I keep trying solids but with little success.

Vanilla Pudding.

This is a pudding recipe from a cookbook my lil sis has.

1/3 cup sugar (I use unrefined dried can sugar in place of regular white sugar)
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups milk (I used Silk soymilk...and a lil' extra cornstarch to aid the thickening)
2 large egg yolks (save the whites for the Pumpkin pudding recipe that follows)
2 Tbsp butter
2 tsp vanilla

In saucepan mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Gradually stir in milk. Cook over med heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir for a minute.
Gradually stir in half the hot mixture into the egg yolks, then stir back into hot mixture in saucepan. Boil and stir for another moment. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla.
Chill pudding for an hour or until chilled. Store covered in refrigerator. 4 servings.

Pumpkin Pudding. This is my very own recipe for Pumpkin Pudding. It could use some refinement in texture, but it tastes really good.

4 eggs separated, plus the egg whites left over from the above recipe
1 (29oz) can pumpkin
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, and 1/2 tsp cloves)
12 oz soymilk
6 tablespoons cornstarch
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Place egg yolks in a large pan. Stir in pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices and milk separately. Using a wire whip, mix in cornstarch. Stir over medium heat until it boils. Continue stirring until it thickens to a pudding consistency. Remove from heat.
Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold into pumpkin mixture. Mix with wire whip. Stir in butter and vanilla. Heat over low heat until mixture is throughly blended.
Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until chilled or overnight.

Mexican Goulash (another recipe of my own devising)

1 box prepared vegan taco filling
1 cup frozen corn
1 (14.5oz) can diced tomatoes
taco sauce (to taste)

Mix ingredients in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until hot. Serve warm.

President-elect Barack Obama

2008-11-07T20:09:00.003-07:00

I posted a comment on this blog: Patterico's Pontifications. The comment says:

I was glad to find someone trying to find some good in Obama. There wasn't a lot there, and it needed to be backed up with actions, but it was still nice.

Also, I find the whole discussion in the comment section absolutely fascinating. There are so many diverse opinions. It's enlightening.

For myself, I will give Obama a chance to set this country on its feet again. From what he says he wants to do, it isn't likely...but if he were to ever try it, his corrupt politician skills would guarantee it would happen. :) He could promise everyone whatever they wanted. He could make them believe they will actually get it while he did some good. Sadly, he doesn't seem to be using his "talents" for good.

And I still haven't decided whether Obama is actually a decent, misguided fellow or a evil man...or something else entirely. Still we shall see....

Links

2008-11-07T19:46:00.003-07:00

Two posts! It's a miracle! (And a record...) Here I'm posting some interesting links:

BookCrossing, The USDA's National Animal Identification System (NAIS), more NAIS news, even more NAIS, Family Farm Defenders, National Novel Writing Month, Finding a "Pick-Your-Own" Farm, Human Implant Tracking Device, Local Harvest, Site for Food and Wine Lovers, Message in a Bottle, Groovy Green, Natural Soap, Providing Books for Children, Bargain Books, Blogathon, Preparing Natural Food, Homestead Helpers, IDK What to Name This One, Solar Power, The Modern Homestead, Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and Get Rich Slowly.

First Post

2008-11-07T14:46:00.001-07:00

I only seem to be able to post one post per blog before I forget I even have one. Oh well, maybe this blog where I detail my ideas for sustainable living will be different.



	Release No. 0108.09 Contact: Nayyera Haq (202) 720-4623 Jerry Redding (202) 720-4623

	AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK SEEKS DIALOGUE WITH PRODUCERS AND STAKEHOLDERS ON NATIONAL ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM

	WASHINGTON, April 15, 2009--Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today held a roundtable discussion with a variety of stakeholders representing the full spectrum of views on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The event kicks off a listening tour to gather feedback and input that will assist the Secretary in making decisions about the future direction of animal identification and traceability in the United States.

Rocky Mountain High

Spring...

The Food Safety Modernization Act

Today is September 11.

And Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Blogging....

We Don't Have Internet Anymore

How to Decide Where to Live in the Country

Blah, Blah, Blah

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me!

So Is This My Lucky Day...Life...Place?

So, Here We Are

On another subject, I really need to stop researching the world.

I Bet You Thought I Was Never Coming Back...

Wow, I've Been Gone a LONG Time!

So I Googled Myself...

*Shudder* *Shudder*

Where This All Began

How to Make Pasta/Pizza Sauce

High Mountain Musing

My Garden is Coming Along Nicely

Uh Oh, I'm Waxing Philosophical! Jon always said I was a sage with mad chicken-cooking skills...

Oh, and One More Thing...

This Time I Really Did Want to Blog

The Simple Life

NAIS Petition

Thusday Thirteen: Things I Like

American Way Farm

Mexican Sugar Cookies

Sucking Eggs

Rant. No Need to Read.

Snowbound Farms

I Made Bread

How to Make No-Bake Cookies

How to Make Tamales

Thursday Thirteen: What's On My Mind

Carbon Footprint

No More Second-Hand?

Exasperated at the Entire Nation

HR 5122, the Insurrection Act, & other handy tidbits

Hot Belly Mama

Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood

More Meaningless Chatter

Our Bookmobile

Nothing Specific

More Censored Book Fun

200 Banned (& Challenged) Books

Banned (& Challenged) Books

Touch the Earth Farm

More Swine Flu Goodness

Urban Homesteading: Garden Girl TV

Swine Flu

Garden Goals Accomplished?

Mmmmm...Raw Milk!

Nice Weather, NAIS, Frankenfoods

Ironwood Farm Project

NAIS Update.

What is this Orange Border?

Catch-Up Post: Peat Pots, Career, Survivalists, etc

Ten Things About Me

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it SNOW!!!

I'll Huff, and I'll Puff, and I'll Blo-o-o-ow Your House Down!

The Agrarian Times

Spring is in the Air!

Getting Out of a Rut

DeliberateLife.com

Catch-All Catch-Up Post

Learning About Herbal Remedies

Garden Update

Think Outside the Bottle Pledge

Think Outside the Bottle Pledge

Cauldron Ridge Farm

Dancing in A Field of Tansy

A New Tradition; A Homesteading Neophyte

Beginning Steps to My First Garden

Multi-Species

Green Meme #3

Damsels in Distress

Happy Birthday to Me!

Something Useful

Talk About Snow!

Shudder Shudder