2013 Goals & Giveaway

Last year was a busy one, as always, for our family. We some of our 2012 goals by traveling to San Salvador Island, Bahamas and the Big Island of Hawaii with extended family and we finally moved to a new homestead-to-be. The stress of moving, an injury, a major summer storm, and some minor illnesses kept us from being as healthy as we would have liked. In my individual pursuits, I joyfully provided freelance web services for Watershed Distillery and City Folk's Farm Shop and represented Swainway Urban Farm at farmers' markets. The American Dairy Association Mideast and Pork Checkoff provided me with tours of farms and facroties to learn more about food production. I reached hundreds of people through classes at Franklin Park Conservatory and City Folk's Farm Shop and programs with Granville Homesteading group, Clintonville Farmers' Market, and the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. I love this work because it provides me chances to exercise my educator muscles and interact with creative, smart, supportive people.

Alex, Lil and I are excited to turn over a new leaf (or, in more appropriate seasonal terms, shovel a new path) in 2013. We want to fulfill the potential of our new homestead and continue to grow strong bodies and minds. In 2013, we hope for and will work towards:

-a garden and hoophouse full of produce -a pantry full of preserved goods -eating meat we raise and slaughter on our property -collecting more eggs from more chickens -a way to offer unusual but important workshops on demystifying guns and meat animal slaughter -a more energy-efficient home -better health through lower stress and homestead exercise -travel to new places within our city and beyond -an updated name and website to more accurately reflect our new activities beyond the kitchen

City Folk's Farm Shop gave me three beautiful Igloo Letterpress 2013 wall calendar posters to ring in the new year for some lucky readers.

Enter to win by sharing one goal you have for 2013 in the comments. Be sure to leave an email address so that we may contact you if random.org picks you as a winner. The contest will be open until January 12, 2013. We will pay shipping to anywhere in the world, so enter away foreign friends.

From our homestead to yours, here's to a fulfilling new year!

All the Little Projects

We jumped right into making our new house a home by checking off some little projects that needed to be done:

• removed carpet downstairs to reduce my allergies to dogs and dust mites
• installed a tie-out for the dogs until fencing can be completed
• hung bird feeders to begin to understand who lives here
• planted tulip bulbs, Lil's first part of her flower garden
• installed a mailbox and post because the old ones were knocked over before we moved in
• put together a cart to hold the mailbox and post and tools
• assembled Twitter-found bed frame and stainless kitchen work table
• re-installed smoke detectors (there were none!)

There are many more little and big projects to come:

• Find the box with my socks - seriously, I've been washing and wearing the same three pairs for over a week
• Fence a dog yard
• Replace leaky kitchen faucet and maybe the sink while we're at it
• Replace incandescent lightbulbs all over the place
• Paint and furnish Lil's room per her specifications, a bribe we gave her to get through the moving stress
• Replace dated hardware and fixtures
• Finish removing carpet tack trips and staples, oh goodness hundreds of staples
• Plant cuttings I took from plants at the old house
• Plant orchard so trees can get established before the spring
• Locate and begin a compost bin
• Make kitchen more workable with shelving, maybe new cooktop?
• Tons of tree work
• Which will inevitably lead to installing a wood stove

Tomorrow I'll post something non-house related and a recipe post is coming soon.

What little (and big) projects are happening in your world?

Thirty Two Things

Today I am thirty two years old. Thirty two feels good - I am no longer searching for a purpose like when I turned a thirty, nor feeling like I need to have a birthday week. Today has been a simple lovely day with my family picking apples. Taking a hint from Adam Lehman, I am dreaming about what will happen in my thirty third year. I hope to do these things:

1. Write in my homestead journal again 2. Sew something for myself 3. Visit the Athens Farmers' Market 4. Donate thirty two pieces of clothing 5. Make something with all the wine corks I've collected 6. Ditto with the canning jar rings 7. ...and lids 8. Stop collecting random bits of home goods without an intended project 9. Choose beauty over function more often 10. Refresh my Internet image with head shots that aren't five years old 11. Make sure I'm in family pictures, hat tip Kate 12. Make a piece of furniture 13. Kill an animal for meat 14. Tan a hide 15. Go to the dentist 16. Grow and dye with indigo 17. Publish some of the essays I've written and kept under wraps because I fear they are too preachy 18. Put the controversial essay in my head onto virtual paper 19. Hang a bat house 20. Use the chainsaw 21. Learn to make a proper lemon twist 22. Make soap 23. Frame my Igloo Letterpress poster and Joachim Knill polaroid 24. Buy a new bed - ours is awful but I don't know what kind to buy 25. Give my hens a new coop 26. Build a tree house with Lil and Alex 27. Consider becoming a net-zero energy homestead 28. Consolidate email addresses 29. Find a better way to organize and share photographs 30. Learn and use Photoshop 31. Eat more vegetables, always 32. MOVE (I hope to share some news about this soon!)

Liquor Cabinet & Homestead Log: March Challenges

March is coming in like a lamb this morning. Sun is streaming through the windows, I hear birds chirping, and I see the green tips of daffodils poking through the soil outside. Before the heady gardening month of April, we are challenging ourselves two ways in March.

Liquor Cabinet Challenge

I'm issuing our family (well, Alex and I) a new twist on a pantry challenge this March: drink only what is in the liquor cabinet as of today. Like January's pantry challenge, this one has two purposes: reduce grocery bills and cull the dozens of jars in the liquor cabinet, tucked into other cabinets and overflowing onto the counter. It really looks like we have a drinking problem around here!

Our count at the beginning of the month is as follows: 28 bottles and jars of strong drink. 10 of these are handmade infusions and liqueurs. All of the handmade ones are unlabeled and a few unidentified. We'll be making some mystery cocktails!

We will not buy beer or wine for home consumption, as we have 2 kegs of home brew, many bottles of miscellaneous beer, seven liters of hard cider and several bottles of wine on hand. Non alcoholic mixers may be purchased during the month. Restaurant drinks are not included in the challenge.

Homestead Log

When we travel and hike, I always bring along my field log. I record wildlife species, the weather, and locations. Initially a project for a high school class, I have been keeping such logs for over a decade. They are a fantastic reference of places we've been and things we've seen.

I pledge during March to begin the same type of record keeping for our homesteading activities. I bought a new Moleskine notebook in which to record a daily log of the planting, harvest, canning, pressing, wood chopping, travel and events of our lives. I hope this will become a useful planning reference in years to come.

What are your plans for March? How are you challenging yourself?