Busy Hands Homestead

100% rain in the forecast. I waver.  Should we?  Shouldn't we? And then I decide. We should. We definitely should use Ivory's school free day to drive across the border into Idaho and hike to the Jerry Johnson hot springs. I chop carrots, apples, cheese and pack up crackers, hard boiled eggs and almond butter. I wrestle sleepy kiddos out of pajamas and into clothes. I cram the dogs into the tiny hatch back space in the back of the car. We are on week four of this year's field season.  Adam leaves early in the morning on Monday and often doesn't return until Friday night.  The weekends are taken by catching up on garden chores, laundry, dishes and packing him up again for the next week.  He has been working hard outside all week and I have been running a household.  Our needs clash.  I want out and he wants a chance to sit down. This isn't just about my need to walk under the trees, to get out of town and ignore my never ending to do list. ...

I don't consider myself to be an experienced gardener.   Every year is new and every year new lessons are learned.  This year cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes were new additions to my garden.   The cabbage needed more sun.  The broccoli provided us with a nice dense head of green followed with crisp little side shoots for the rest of the growing season.  The Brussels sprouts resulted in cheers when I served them to my kids.  And the Jerusalem artichokes - well they did great, but dominated the sad row of tomatoes I planted next to them.  While the sturdy stalks of the sunflowers reached preposterous heights, the tomatoes barely survived.   I know now to not plant anything close to these vigorous plants.  Rather than having the abundant harvest of tomatoes I had hoped for, beautiful fall bouquets brightened up our living space.  After a few light freezes, a serious cold snap was p...

The rain is pattering on the windows. It is dark outside. I set the alarm early and reluctantly crawled out of bed. If I want a few moments to myself I need to take them before the kids wake up and we embark on our get ready for school routine. Routine. My life suddenly has routine: a set bed time, a set up time, a set dinner time, a set we have to be somewhere time. There are weekdays and weekends and Thursdays are early out days. Ivory walks out of the big red brick building at two instead of three. There is an extra hour of sunlight. A precious extra hour of warmth and light in our day, and our days have already been getting so much shorter.  The sun late to rise and early to set and it is only September.  It will get so much darker yet. Last Thursday we walked among tall grasses, spied the bright red berries of wild asparagus, and admired the yellow of the first fallen leaves. It was warm, and sunny, and almost summer. The river was cold and lazy....

"There is a big seed in this one." Sylvan is beaming at me, shoving the fourth plum into his mouth in under five minutes. "Slow down. You are going to get a belly ache." We went on a walk through the neighborhood and passed a tree tucked into an alley that had dropped the most perfectly ripe, pink and purple plums.  We picked them up and brought them home. They are our latest edible find. A few days ago we picked spearmint up the Rattlesnake in the Bugbee Nature Area.    It is dried down and ready to be tea on cold winter nights.    These beautiful and delicious shaggy parasols popped up in our neighbors yard (currently empty and we did ask the landlord's permission) and I used them in our frittata yesterday.  The remainder of the mushrooms are opening up and we will pick and grill them soon. (These mushrooms are what a portabello mushroom you can buy at the grocery store attains to be.  They are meaty and dense and juicy.) Fo...

3 Mamas 6 Kids 3 Dogs We all piled into three cars and drove an hour to pick huckleberries. Small, red and purple berries dot the understory. Each one falling, plunk, into the bottom of my container until finally the bottom is covered. Our fingers red and sticky.  Two mamas, six kids, three dogs, a hour drive there and back:  Totally worth the effort.  Huckles, as Ivory calls them, in the freezer.  Huckles in the scones.  Huckles in this morning's pancakes.   The sweet and tart juicy fruit reminding us that summer is almost over - it is Huckleberry time!

This fantastically awesome photograph of me was taken by Sylvan on the very tip top of  Waterworks Hill.  It is the hill I can see out of our east windows.  The three of us have never made it to the top for the following reasons:  1.  We walk to the trail head.  Even though the trail head is just at the edge of our neighborhood it adds just enough distance to the trek that we have to turn back way before the top. 2.  I let Sylvan walk.  He is slow. So slow.  It took us three hours once to walk from the car (lesson learned from reason 1) to just past this little draw and back to the car...  I could point the very spot out to you from my yard.  It was at once a far distance for Sylvan to walk and so, so very far away from the peak.  3. We leave our house to close to lunch time and we go home to eat.  So today we: 1. drove to the trailhead 2. Sylvan walked the way DOWN. 3. were on the slopes by 10:00 ...

Three plant starts are now nestled in dirt, packed in burlap bags, lined up on top of our chicken coop.   Sixteen five gallon buckets in, I started feeling crazy. Lugging the sixteenth bucket up the ladder I start worrying that I will not finish before the kids wake up from their naps and that this whole idea is more trouble than it is worth.  A total of twenty two buckets later, Ivory is up, Sylvan is still sleeping and three green, I-should-have-planted-them-last-week starts are sunk into the dirt.  I hope this works.  I visualize the plants growing, cascading down the walls of the coop, keeping the interior of the coop cool while growing big fat heavy fruits....  but this isn't a story of making the most of the space on a city lot, or about one of the many uses of burlap bags, but about the seeds I hope will flourish in this space.  Years ago - pre-children, pre-marriage and even pre-engagement - Adam, my future in-laws and I atte...