Harvest Time

Well, the time has come, summer ends. What little of it we had. This summer was the coldest, wettest summer I have ever seen in my lifetime. Not that I am complaining about it being cold, but I am complaining about the poor output from my garden. It was a poor year for gardening. As I talk to the many local farmers and gardeners, everyone has the same complaint. It is next to impossible to grow root vegetables in saturated ground, and near impossible to get the hay and grains in this year! It is very discouraging to the farmers and gardeners alike. I am discouraged as I looked forward to the crops to get me through the long winter. I had visions of feeding the baby fresh garden vegetables. With the ever increasing prices in the grocery stores, the last thing I want to do is buy something I can grow in the grocery store. Not to mention the gas prices!!! Goodness!
How will we survive it. So half my hay is in, I picked the last squash and pumpkins today. I need to pickle my beets this week. Plant my garlic soon too. It seems that the work never ends. Then the garden needs to be tilled, and prepared for winter. I am still drying herbs though. Guess I better get that done too. I am having a hard time washing wool too. I need a few good sunny days to dry the fleece after I wash it, and can only do one at a time because of the amount of work and space required. It has been poor weather for that too. I only sheared my rams this last week because they never stayed dry long enough to get them done this year. I have been trying to get to them since spring. What a shame though, lost half their wool as I needed to leave an inch on for fall, and they matted too. I will never let that happen again. Next spring they will be put in the barn for a week if needed so they can dry out!
Well, on the positive side, soon I will have fresh meat as butchering time is coming. Also will be able to make loads of applesauce, and put apples in the freezer and root cellar. The apples are juicy this year!
Along with this time of year is the fall fair. I entered Berenger in a baby contest. He placed third, two little girls beat him, it is awfully hard to beat the girls. He was very good about it. I guess he did not want to make the little girls look bad. What a gentleman! Bear is busy learning to roll around, attempting to crawl, trying new foods, and babbling. He will be a verbacious little bugger when he gets talking. He has been helping me can, he sits in his back pack carrier on his fussier days and squaks at me to hurry up. No wasting time with him around to keep me on my toes!
The nice thing about harvest time is that the leaves are changing color and fall is my favorite time of year! The bugs are dying or disappearing into the ground, and you can enjoy a nice long hike in the woods! I miss that! Bear can sit in the back pack now, so we will start hiking, time for him to learn to appreciate the fall too! I knitted him a hunter orange hat the other day, he is so cute in it! To all of you who hate winter, my advice to you is to get outside now, hike and enjoy the smells of fall, the sounds of the crisp fall leaves underfoot, and the sights of those beautiful fall colors! The best time of year is too short, seems it's even shorter than summertime. Enjoy it while you can!

Plastic or Cloth?

One day, while I was pregnant, my environmentalist daughter and I were discussing the merits of using cloth versus plastic diapers (meaning pampers etc). We figured out that if the average baby wore diapers and then pull ups for two years - it would cost $20,000+ dollars. Yikes! When you think that this equals one year of university including books and meals, and housing... that's alot of dough! So if you use commercial diapers for two years you are basically flushing your child's first year of university tuition down the drain so to speak. That is staggering! I don't even want to think about the cost to the environment. Ever been to a landfill and actually seen the piles of diapers and the plastic bags they travel there in? If we had to personally bring our own garbage into the dump, I think we would be more aware of what we are doing to our poor earth. If you don't believe me, go to your local dump, take a good look around! It is pretty sad when you really think that that stuff will mostly still be there hidden under the soil for thousands of years. Don't believe me - what are all the items the archeologists are digging up. Someone's trash from 1200 bc. So what am I doing about this? Well, as much as I hate doing all the wash and playing with poopie diapers, I am using cloth diapers. I had a problem with all the ones you can buy in the stores (if you can find any), and the hand me down ones from god knows when just were not cutting it (leaking something awful), I decided to design my own. What's more is that the linings are made from recycled materials! Yup, cool eh? The best thing is that if you find plastic diaper covers (from gerber or other company) - they don't leak (unless you put them on wrong or the plastic pants are too loose. I love them. So I thought I would share them. Feel free to call me if you want me to make some for you!

Lonely for Lucy

It is with great saddness that my family announces the passing of Lucy. Lucy was our granny goat, of Angora breeding. She has lived with us for 7 years. Not only did she provide us with mohair fiber to keep us warm, but she also provided us with joy and laughter. Lucy had a great personality. Loads of it! Lucy came to us when we called her name, she had a unique bleeting noise that she greeted me with in the morning. Lucy smiled, really she smiled - we have the picture to prove it, especially after giving birth to Murphy. Lucy was quite the trooper then. She had lived on a farm where she was very neglected, and came to us so thin, that you could not tell she was pregnant. Actually she was 4 months pregnant at the time. I was very surprised when she popped out a baby one cold March morning. Lucy struggled to regain her weight, while nursing Murphy, but she slowly came around. Last winter was very hard on Lucy, and again she had trouble keeping weight on. Upon examination we discovered that she had no teeth, and nearly died during the snow storms of 2008. My daughter, Andrea, made it her mission to keep Lucy alive at least until spring so that we would be able to bury her. She "designed" a mash that succeeded in bringing Lucy around, and in fact she did very well with this mash. But as this summer has progressed, Lucy digressed. And so it is with great saddness that we decided that Lucy should be put down before it gets much colder. She was surrounded by her loving human family as she took her last nibbles of tender green grass, and an always appreciated scratch under the chin. Lucy will be missed. We loved you Lucy! Thank you for giving us Malachy and all your grandkids who will remind us of your smiles and sweet antics. Rest in peace old girl.

"WASH YOUR HANDS!"

In the recent days with the listeriosis scares, I feel compelled to speak out. As a nurse, as a mother, as a consumer, I think that people need to take a deep breath, and do a little more research, and wash their hands!!! I repeat; Wash your Hands!! How many times does your mother, your teachers, your employers have to say it before it sinks in? Why do we need signs in our public bathrooms telling us to do something as basic as washing our hands after sneezing on our hands, or doing the bathroom ritual.... Haven't our mothers been yelling at us since a very young age to wash our hands, perhaps there is a very good reason for it?
Do you know that there are more than 250 foodborne diseases in existance? Are you aware that most of these, like listeriosis, are not new? Everyone knows Salmonella, and E.Coli, but the others are less known. Listeria, Camphylobacter, Calicivirus (Like Norwalk), Shigella, Hepatitis A, Giardia, Cryptociridia, and Clostridium Botulinum (Botulism). These are just a small number of foodborne diseases that we know of, and almost all of them can be prevented from making us ill simply by washing our hands, fully cooking our meat, and properly cleaning our kitchens and utensils including cutting boards. Now there is also documentation that states that you should not eat and drink unpasturized dairy products, like raw milk, and cheeses made from raw milk, but many people do, myself included. The only problem I myself have suffered due to drinking raw milk is Listeria infection which contributed to miscarriages. After I stopped drinking the raw milk, I was able to carry a healthy baby to term. So I fully support pregnant women NOT drinking raw milk.
Now they are talking about Irradiating our food to change the DNA of bacteri to inhibit them from reproducing and growing on our food. How can exposing our food to radiation improve our health risks? I fully oppose this!
Now here is a thought - how is it that people who smoke and take illicit drugs are hysterically concerned about listeria infections... do they not realize that what they are doing is killing them with 100% certainty. It may take years longer, but their habits are most definately killing them, this makes me shake my head.
And another thought - is it possible that our new hand cleaners have deceased our resistance to bacteria and viruses? Perhaps we need to return to good ole soap and water?
This brings me to a statement so many older people have quoted after hearing all this frantic, sensationalism about listeria and salmonella - "We all gotta die of sumthin" and of course, as my 98 year old patient says, "What ever happened to good ole hand washing!" She reminds me that in her day there were no refrigeraters, or food inspectors, or freezers. " We all survived, if you washed your hands and cooked your food properly, you didn't get sick". Do you think that we have too much technology, and too much science nowadays? Perhaps we should think simple logic. Handwashing worked in 1866, why wouldn't the technique work today? So the mother in me will remind you all to calm down, cook your food properly and WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE YOU PUT ANYTHING IN YOUR MOUTH OR HANDLE ANYTHING YOU PUT INTO YOUR MOUTH!

Listeriosis Lessons

In a time when food is becoming a huge issue in the news, I am grateful that I grow my own. Since I was a teenager, I have memories of "food scares". The first I ever heard of and was old enough to understand was the razors in the halloween apples issue. It seems that 30 years ago I was just old enough to understand that some crazy person was putting razor blades in apples that were being handed out to children as halloween treats. I can remember my mother cutting my apples open to be sure they were safe. In the mid 80's the water was unsafe to drink, legionaires disease was the culprit then. Red food dye was suddenly cancer causing, and the color of candy changed. When my children were small in the early 1990's, the hospitals were x-raying the candy because pins were showing up in the food. With the dawn of 9-11 anthrax threats increased suspicions. With rising gas prices people are becoming more aware of where their food comes from. Suddenly everyone is concerned with the distance our food travels and it's freshness. Now, today, listeriosis is a major issue, and again I am hearing people say - "buy local".
Maybe this is sounding like a rant, well, I continue to rant. Our goverment had been doing absolutely nothing to encourage local farmers to continue farming, there is no assistance or compensation for farmers when things go wrong, when taxes rise, and cost of feed rises. In recent years the government is starting to regulate farmers, and has increased our taxes and have instituted all sorts of fees for farmers. They want us to belong to associations and registries all at a heafty price, not to mention, most farmers do not want the governments hands into the running of their farms. One older farmer told me that when the government has a hand in on your farm through incentive programs for instance, and if your farm fails, they will take your farm, they do not care that the property belonged to your family for the past 200 years and that you had planned on handing it down to your child. The government offers significant funding to foriegners to come from other countries to move here and farm on a large scale, they pay them to move here, pay to set them up with large farm properties and modern state of the art equipment, but refuse to help farmers whose families have farmed New Brunswick soil for over a hundred years. New Brunswick farmers are discouraged, angry, and feel helpless. In their hearts they know that local customers are going to be crying out for local produce and meats, but they will not be able to continue farming.
What will happen when we can no longer get our food from across the borders, when costs to ship food are so high that the only place you will be able to shop is from local producers, and there are none - thanks in part to the powers that be (Harper for one)?
I know were my food comes from, I know what the animals were fed, that they were humanely slaughtered, what conditions they were butchered under, and stored in. I know that my food is fresh, and safe. Hormone free, antibiotic and chemical free. My only concern now is how will I keep people from sneaking out from the city and stealing my food from under my nose? Yes, it happens. This winter a chicken-napper was loose. Stealing three of my birds in one day, and five from another farmer who lives nearby. They even took his crate that was stored beside his coop. I anticipate the day will come when people who can not afford the food in the stores (wait, this is already happening), and feel they have no other way to feed their children (the food banks are already running dry), will turn to thievery to feed their children. I know it is coming. I planned this years garden just for that purpose, with the cost of heating and fuel this winter, I expect the chicken theif to return. So when planting my garden this spring, I planted extra food, twice what I normally plant. If I catch someone stealing my food this year, perhaps I will invite them to have something from my garden. How could I turn my back on them when obviously they must be feeling pretty desperate, enough so to sneak into a chicken coop in daylight, and steal my hens. If they had asked I would have given them some beef, pork, lamb, and vegetables too. Honesty would have paid higher dividends.

Growing Up

Growing up is hard to do. The crooner missed out when he named his song breaking up is hard to do, but personally I think growing up is even harder. With a break up, you just shrug it off and move on. With growing up, sometimes you can not shrug it off and move on. Sometimes the things you have learned along the way cling like a burdock in wool. You just can't shake the memory. Everyone has had an experience in their childhood that would qualify as traumatic, or unforgettable, some people make it to adulthood without bad experiences, but most don't. I think I got every one's bad experiences for them. I will not sit here and recall them all, but I will say that out of just about every bad experience I have had, a good one resulted. Huh? Yes, I did say that. Haven't you ever had something bad happen to you, and you thought it was the worst thing ever, then many years down the road you were able to help someone through the same exact problem? That has happened to me time and again. So I was able to turn the bad experience into a salvageable good experience in a manner of speaking. We learn from our mistakes, we learn to live from the bad experiences, and we learn to be survivors after the really horrible traumas. I am a survivor. Ever wonder how your friend can repeatedly pick herself up after every horrible experience in her life and think that if it were you, you could not possibly survive it? Ever have a counselor say to you, "Any other woman would have killed herself already". I am a survivor. Now my teen daughter is growing up, moving out on her own into the world, and all I can think is that I do not want her to learn to be a survivor - I don't want her to go through the traumas I went through at that age. I want to protect her. I trust her, I just don't trust the mean, cruel, sick world we live in. I pray that she has a chance to become street smart without the traumas that thrust us into becoming street smart the hard way. Growing up for some is easy, uncomplicated, fun and trauma free, but for most of us, it is not. Don't let that fool you though, even the easy road is hard. It is just that the hard road is treacherous. My advise to my daughter is simply this, be alert to trouble, don't be so trusting, and don't do obviously stupid things that can potentially result in a traumatic experience. You are a very naive and trusting girl, but it is time to become a smart and strong woman now. Remember the lessons I taught you, and heed all the warnings you have heard in your lifetime. I lived the traumas, I want to spare you everyone of them. Learn from my experiences and mistakes. I love you. Mom

Insomnia then and now

Consider Insomnia as it relates to the time period in your life in which you experience it. When we have children, everything is experienced in a different way, even Insomnia. When I was single, and had a day off from work coming up, Insomnia was not such a big deal. Back then, before children, I could read a novel or watch late night tv all night long, and sleep the entire next day. After children, I can still read the novel, watch late night tv, or sit at my computer all night long, but the next day, I will pay for it. Dearly. When I was younger, I could eat ice cream in bed, or even potatoe chips and chocolate bars, and not worry about the consequences - sleeplessness due to the caffeine hit. After children, I don't dare eat chocolate after 6 pm for fear that I will have Insomnia and pay for it the next day. So I sit here at 3 am, watching the olympics, hanging out on face book, searching the net out of boredom, doing sudoku puzzles, and writing emails to everyone I know and don't know - waiting for my eyes to get tired and heavy, waiting.... and waiting.... I never should have eaten those chocolate chips. I know I craved them all day, but I should have controlled myself. The temptation was too great. So now, I anticipate, and plan for tomorrow, or should I say, later today... for the penalty of Insomnia, for eating chocolate in the evening. I am sure the baby will be very irritable, and wide awake very early, and the sheep will break out of their pens, and the goats will get their horns stuck in the fence. Lucy, the goat, who is elderly and ailing may even be found deceased and I may need to dig a hole to bury her. The cow might get out and run down the highway. The phone will ring just as the baby and I lay down for a late morning nap, and today will be the day that everyone I know will decide to stop by and visit, all because I at chocolate, and suffered from Insomnia. Back then, I could have slept all day long, but this is now,surely I will suffer the consequences - of Insomnia.