Help! I think I might be getting Crunchy!

At the very least, I'm gritty.

Yes. that's right. In an effort to FURTHER alienate myself at otherwise great parties, I am now firmly seated on the "Crunchy" bandwagon. Actually, they probably wouldn't let me on the wagon due to some of my other silly ideas, but I'd probably be running along side it.
Sometimes I scare me.


I mean, I won't be stopping my monthly salon visits for fresh hair dye anytime soon, and I haven't actually been able to make myself care too much about how or where or by whom my favorite skinny jeans were made.

But for the life of me, I can't figure out why the hell I've been smearing toxins on all of my eating surfaces for years!!!! Why I have been eating vegetables grown in human sledge.(Thanks for looking out for me Big Brother, it turns out that eating your own crap won't kill you.....right away.)

And why on earth I have been drinking milk and eating meat that is chock full of hormones and medications!! Why?!

So that's it.

Without even thinking about it, I have been making changes.

I have found myself increasingly aware of my own environment, and what we are putting into our bodies.

Plastic containers? gone. I switched back to old fashioned glass.

grocery store meat? No way. Can't do it anymore. We have found local sources where we can actually SEE how our food is being raised.

Vegetables? Gardening along with the Farmers Market.

Milk? ONLY organic.

Cleaners? I switched to vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.(2 spray bottles) Cheap, effective, and it actually dissenfects!

So that's it. I'm on a mission to erradicate as much of the foreign crap that we put in and around our bodies, as possible. To begin to "eat out of our own yard" more .

It's just logic that I cannot argue with. Put food into your body that it recognizes and can use.


But where does this leave me? Where's my "group"? My "gang" My 'club"??


The "Greenies" won't have me because I'm too conservative,
The Conservative homeschoolers eye me warily, because they know that I've been known to have a drink from time to time.
The Liberal homeschoolers, while they WILL kick back a beer with ya, also know that I go to a PCA church.
The "Crunchies" won't have me because I heart JCrew and Nordstrom and despise the whole rubber-shoe-croc thing .
And, of course, I could never really get along with the Fashionistas because eventually they'd spy my fake True Religion jeans, and they's know I wasn't a believer. It'd be ugly.



But maybe this.
Yes.....yes.. ...
This is where I belong. What's HER club?



Cheers!
Melissa

Keepin' it rural........

Race has gone back to work, and so have we. The slave labor force was immediately called into action to help get things back into maintainable state, here on our 13 acre bit o' earth.

I am currently super-jazzed about the still small, grass roots trend across this country toward sustainable agriculture. So, in between baseball or music, or theater, the kids have been forced into supporting my move to become more self sustaining, here on the hard, rocky, unforgiving mountainous land that we have. (Of course they are also directly FED by this as well, so there is SOME motivation. ;-) )


Here you will see part of the unskilled labor force painting our newly resurrected chicken house.(Thank-you G.W) It has a simple, but very sturdy construction: chicken wire floor, plywood walls, and a metal roof with a sky light.

The next day we built the run. Austin and Jackson dug all the postholes and set the posts in a bit of quickcrete, and Savannah and I were in charge of the poultry wire and the staple gun and the Lowe's runs.
I used the Big Saw for the first time and I am no longer afraid to do so. Raw power, man....Raw Power!
When I took this picture, we hadn't hung the door on it's hinges yet. (Because SOMEONE forgot to get them on her 2nd trip to Lowe's that day!)
The girls will stay in their run all summer until my gardening is done , and then they will be able to forage to their hearts content.

Here are the girls in their new home. They are quite happy little pullets, and had already scratched in a bunch of leaves from outside the door. The girls are fed a diet that consists largely of vegetable scraps. The idea is this: The wire floor is covered with about 4-6 inches of wood shavings. the girls constantly scratch and turn these shavings under. CONSTANTLY.The wood shavings and chicken manure make awesome compost. After the summer, we will shovel this all out onto the compost heap, which will go onto the garden. And then we will replace the floor with fresh shavings. No waste! And we replenish the soil for the next season.

This is our other project. I expanded our garden this year, and this is the newest part. You are looking at broccoli, peppers, and potatoes. (Even though you can't really see the potatoes!)

This is one of the raised beds that we built this year right beside the house. We have already eaten alot of the lettuce out of this, but you get the idea. And I planted broccoli here as well. I really like the raised beds, because as long as you pay attention to the soil, you can really grow a lot in a very small space.

And this is the rest of the garden. The brown container is planted with carrots. The other things in the picture are strawberries,blueberries, cabbage,peppers, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and cucumbers.

I also planted tomatoes and squash up near the house, just outside the kitchen.

I love this stuff, and I am thinking hard about the whole concept of sustainable agriculture,which is nothing new, but was actually quite commonplace before Big Brother got involved in our food supply.

So that's what we've been up to! I already wish that I had tilled up an even bigger garden, and I am wondering how well crops would grow on a mountainside.

Cheers!

melissa

tap...tap....tap....

Anyone out there? It has been so long since I've blogged that I think that I've forgotten how.

No point in trying to re-cap,.. so I'll just jump on in.

I've been doing a lot of gardening this year, and so far things are looking pretty good. I am fairly certain that the only thing that makes a good gardener is experience(and the friendly advice one gets from other successful gardeners). In the beginning, you end up with so many things that DON'T work-out, but the measly harvest that you DO get makes you jump for joy and you begin to think excitedly about what you'll differently next year.

So I am excited about this year. I've added some raised beds and containers, and I expanded the whole original garden by about 1/3. All this has led me to think more seriously about food storage, and the different options available to us there. I have a closet full of junk that I could possibly use for food storage......but then where would we put the junk?

*I feel that I should stress,here, the importance of a "junk spot" to my over-all house cleaning strategy. Every room in my house has one and it's where all the "uncategorizables" ? go. So...seriously...where WOULD the junk go?*

Also, in the name of food storage and growing your own fresh food, we are working on a chicken coop! Actually thomasina's boyfriend G.W got it done yesterday, and the kids will be nailing chicken wire, painting, and digging post holes for the "run" this week. Now.....just gotta get some pullets to put IN it. This sort of thing totally excites me. I swear I think it's in my blood.

But just so you know that this is the same girl that you've come to know and wonder about I want you to know that on Monday, I bought the most amazing patent leather, peep-toe heels.They are from banana republic, and they are espresso colored with a creamy colored swath across the toe. Yes, that's right.. Timeless. and they were originally $120, marked down to $33.99. ...AND IN MY SIZE! no brainer. they shall be mine forever.

Now......let's talk about the pros and cons of chicken shit in the home garden, shall we?

Cheers!
Melissa