Projects And Commentary

Cole Crops Ready For Transplant 2013

Tess's Land Race Currant Tomatoes Rising

2011 Apricots As Pretty As Ever!

Lovely Candied Lemon Peel

  


The preceding are just some homesteady projects of the past and the present:

    So today this blog post is going to respond to the following article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/01/the_foxfire_books_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html#

       I found the above article quite interesting. I myself have read most all of the Foxfire series! In fact, it has had a distinct effect upon my life. So much so that I doubt that I would be where I am today, had I never been influenced by it, and by John Seymour's "The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency." However, I think the author of the article above, though making some valid points, is really missing some insights.

       Let me start by telling a little of my story. In 1997, my second son, Matthew, was born. The years previous to that had been a real emotional roller coaster. I had had a couple of early miscarriages, and lost two children in my second trimester of pregnancy. Because of my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I was able to carry on, but not without much sorrow.

      By the time Matt came along, I had been on such a long hormone roller coaster, that I was bound to suffer from the effects of it. So, I went through a postpartum depression, as my hormones were taking their sweet time to level out.

      It was not the first time I had dealt with some postpartum blues. After my first son, Ken was born I experienced some mild depression as well. Enough so that my parents were concerned. Even today, I don't remember it being nearly as bad as they were making it out to be. They recommended some counseling, which I did not find to be very helpful. Truthfully, I was mostly, just grieving over the fact that my parents had moved far away from me, right at the time I became a wife, and then a mother. My Dad surrendered to the ministry, and within a year, I was married, abandoned(conceptually by my mom and dad who were off living their own life, without me), and then became a mother. Actually, I think I did pretty good:^)

      However, what I endured when Matt came along was more severe by far. I got through it, after I discovered what was wrong, by much prayer, Bible study, and singing to Jesus. Once I came to understand just what depression is, I spent my time forcing my mind out of the rut that hormones had thrown it into by changing each negative thought I had into a positive one. It was a painstaking process. So whenever I would feel panicked, or I would have negative thoughts, or be overcome with grief, I would replace it with prayer, or quote scripture, or a spiritual song. In addition to this, I supported my efforts with some mood lifting herbs, and a few vitamins as well. This worked very well!

      When the fog lifted nearly a year after Matt was born, It was like the sun came up, and flooded my life with renewed energy, and an intellectual rainbow of creative thought! It was then, that through prayer, I discovered that God was telling me to stop casting around for what I should do with my life, and focus on what he had already given me to do. He told me to be the best wife, mother, and Christian I could possibly be!

      So I began thinking about how I could do what I sincerely felt, and still feel, God wanted me to do. In my mind I decided on priorities. One of the first goals I set for myself was to raise godly men(and later when Lacey came along, a godly woman). I also began looking at what kinds of food I wanted to give my family. I felt, and still feel that in the area of food, our nation is starving itself.

      How can I say that, living in one of the most over-weight states in the nation? Because being over-weight is a symptom of starvation. What? You say, "How can this be?" I say this, because in most people, not all(everybody is different), a person gets over weight when their body is not getting enough nutrition. The body, starved of the nutrients it needs, desires more and more food in order to get that nutrition.

      Now anybody who reads this section, that knows me, is going to say to themselves, "This woman IS overweight. How can she talk about being overweight?". My weight came along with my pregnancies. In high school to stay thin, I had to eat one meal a day. My metabolism has never been very fast, not sure why. Honestly, I think the starvation of my years in high school, probably assisted my weight gain once I had babies. The body, once denied, works very hard to pack pounds on. Early in my marriage, I seriously did not get near enough exercise. I was busy being a mom.  Believe it or not, I am not a heavy eater. Anyway, ultimately, what got me here is exactly what I am talking about above.

     Anyway, at the end of 1992, I looked at the devolving state of food in the grocery stores, and said to myself this is not good enough for my family. I realized that the food at the stores, were being sprayed heavily with pesticides, and that artificial fertilizers were allowing crops to continue to leach nutrients out of the soil, without adding anything back. Added to that was the appearance on the scene of genetically modified food, which I did not trust to be healthy at all. My instincts were right: Don't Eat GMO Food

     As I was researching giving better food to my children, I stumbled across the Back to the Land movement of the the early 70's, otherwise known as "homesteading". It was then that I read the Foxfire series. Someday, I'll go into how we went from renting a lot, to renting 2 acres, to renting a couple of different 5 acre places, to finally owning 4 acres, and now 34 acres. For now, I'll just say that the people that the guy in this article pokes a little fun at were me at one point or another.

     I went from a lot in the city in southern California, to an on again/off again subsistence farm in Oklahoma. Why on again/off again? Well if there is anything I have discovered, it is that feeding oneself solely from what one raises is HARD WORK!!! There are weeds, predators, disease, weather catastrophes, seed fertility loss, and physical disabilities resulting from injury! It has always been that way too! What person's grandpappy, or grandmama didn't have stories of great crop losses or starvation times on the farm??? The answer to that is NONE OF US!!!

    The man who wrote the article I posted, which is the topic of this post, is right in a way. However, the author misses much of what should be the point of his article! The generations that knew how to truly survive, have died, or are dying! We,  who are left, are trying to revive, or keep alive, knowledge that is rapidly being lost!

    I thank God for Martha Stewart's fancy chicken coop! Thank the Lord, there is somebody out there in the public eye, showing the public that good organic fresh eggs are better for you than store bought mass produced eggs that come from a chicken that has about a foot of space between him and about a hundred thousand other chickens! Because those chickens get no sunlight, nor fresh air, nor healthy bugs or grass, and cannot produce healthy eggs! Martha Stewart is NOT playacting! Martha Stewart is helping families across this nation!

    We need more people, "playacting" at raising their own food!!! We need them, because there could come a time when the house of technological cards we have built, could fall! Some day we may HAVE to scrabble a living out of the land again! Someday, whether we can raise a chicken, or plant a seed, or even own a seed that will grow a non-toxic fruit or vegetable, may mean the difference between life and death for us, or our country, and even our planet!


Britt Peterson, in the article writes:

   "Emily Cook, manager at Virginia’s Farm at Sunnyside, told me she was sick of “farmer groupies” who weren’t actually interested in the real problems farmers are facing. “The discussion needs to move beyond how great heirloom tomatoes are to how are we going to have farmers 20 years from now,” she said. “Our system really needs to change to make farming a viable career to people.”"

    Oh, how much the above line of thinking misses the mark! The idea that we need to make it so farmers can have "careers" on more factory, over-sprayed, antibiotic laden, nutrient stripping farms, is the opposite of where we need to go! Farming was never a career, anymore than being a doctor was a career, or being a preacher was a career! Farming always was, and should be, a calling!

    We need more people! From the smallest backyard enthusiast, to the subsistence homesteader, to the organic grower at the farmers market, to the yuppy CSA, to the small organic raw milk dairy, we need them all!!! Those people, are the security of not only this nation, but the world!

    In the 1920's and 30's a revolution took place in agriculture, called the tractor! It was a miracle to farmers everywhere! It gave them more free time! It made their lives easier. About the same time, another revolution was occurring, a revolution of how farmers thought about farming! Instead of farming being a calling to feed others in their communities, and their families, suddenly farming became a "Business!".

    There were some good effects from the revolution of farming from calling to business, but there were a lot more bad effects! The thing about big technological changes, is that it is like throwing a a big stone into a clear, still, pool. Whatever havoc the stone creates, for good or ill, gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger! Once farming became a business, then businessmen took over our food supply, and it became more about making money than it was about surviving, or health, or even the  happiness of the farmers themselves! This is why since the 1930's we have gone from about 55% of the population owning of being associated with a farm, to 2% of the population.

    What the Foxfire books show is the history of an extremely self-sufficient society, and their remnants who have since died, leaving us with a lack of skills to do for ourselves! Yes, we do have a number of very yuppy back-to-the-land hobbyists, who have very little concept of just what they are messing about with. What blessings they are to the world! For they are the ones awake enough to see we have a problem! They are the beginnings of a new revolution, heading us back toward balance, and stasis until the next stone gets thrown in the pond!

    In the meantime, there are those of us, who are NOT playacting! We are working, and striving, and failing, and getting up, dusting ourselves off, and striving some more! We raise our gardens, milk our goats, and cows, raise our poultry, grow feed crops for our animals, grow orchards, preserve our harvests, spin our yarn, weave, crochet, and all manner of other things!

    To me, all these people, from the child who plants bean in a cup, to an old man who still follows a furrow in spring, to the woman who milks her first goat with one hand while reading about it with a book in the other(like I did myself), to the dairy farmer who has done it all his life, deserve to be lifted up for their courageous actions! They don't need to be discouraged, rather encouraged, and assisted!

   

   

                                          Our Plum Trees Loaded With Unripe Fruit

       Last year at plum season I was searching around for something to do with plums besides jelly(as I have plenty of that from last season), and canned plums which I am not very fond of.  I decided to make a plum sauce for meat. I did not have a lot of time, because I was about to leave for camp. So I made it up, and threw it into the freezer. Last night I finally tried it on pork strips.
    The original recipe I came up with involved running the ripe plums through my food mill, and cooking the sauce with onions, garlic, some vinegar, and sugar, and then blending it all together in a blender. Then I returned the sauce to a pot, and cooked it all down real thick. Then I just tossed it into the freezer, and basically forgot about it until last night.
    Last night I blended some of the sauce with soy sauce, and brown mustard, and added just little bit of pineapple juice. Let me just say, YUMMM! This was a fantastic meal! We had the Plum glazed pork strips,  Roasted potatoes, and onions, and salad with Poppy Seed dressing. It was a very good meal!
    Today I am planting Peas and Fava Beans. This year I am planting Tall Telephone shell peas, and Mammoth Melting Sugar peas, and probably some Super Sugar Snap peas.. I like all the different forms of peas. They each have their purpose in the kitchen. The shell peas make a nice table vegetable, especially with new red potatoes, or in cream sauce with baby onions. The Super Sugar Snap peas are wonderful and a nice fiber vegetable, to serve in butter, or as a finger snack. Most of these get eaten right in the garden(by me!). The sugar peas are really nice when making Asian dishes, particularly in stir-fry.

    I am in the process of writing a book. I am writing a cookbook.  When it is completed, I will be releasing the book on CD-Rom. I plan to enforce a 5 year copyright on the book, after which I plan to allow the book in the public domain. I'm not much of a believer in egregious copyright laws. I think it is more than acceptable to earn some money, and then let it go for the use of others. It is my intent to create a series of youtube videos immediately preceding the release of my cookbook. This will be a fun and educational experience I think!

                        Here is one of my gardens from a few years ago. This was quite a productive garden that year. However, the bean teepee did not do as well. Needed to put the mulch down before I put the teepee in.                                

   

   It has been a rather odd winter. No real cold, very little precipitation. Just an odd winter! I took the above pick in the Fall. I am very ready for spring, and I am hoping the weather people are wrong, and the drought just breaks. I am looking forward to gardening.

    Much of homesteading is educated guess work, and observation. It is watching the times and seasons, and planning based upon experience, but still having flexibility, when created nature is under another plan. Take February, please! Sometimes I'd like to give it away. It is often my most frustrating month garden wise. I am always in a hurry to get started gardening, and February is always in the way:^)

     I never start planting much of anything, except peas, fava beans, and potatoes before the 2nd two weeks of February. The first two weeks of February, are usually quite cold here in Oklahoma. It seems like the first two weeks of February are winter's last gasp, at least usually. This year, I'm just not sure what is happening! I was seriously about to start planting in earnest, when all of a sudden, weather people started talking anew about cold. Bummer! Not only that, but now they are showing clearly cold temperatures until the 3rd week in February! Curses! What is a desperate homesteader to do!

     Last night I went to the livestock auction. I bought two pairs of Silkie Chickens, and one rather nice Speckled Sussex chickens for $62. All the time I am sitting there saying to myself, why in the world would anybody want to spend the kind of money these people are spending on birds of unknown origins?

   If you buy a chicken for $15, at $1.50 per dozen, she has to lay 10 dozen eggs before she pays for herself! If that hen lays 4 times per week, (which I think is a reasonable expectation for an unknown commodity) then it will take her 30 weeks to pay for herself. This is almost 60% of a year, and does not include the feed that she is fed, or any care either! Now since there is no way to be truly sure of the hen's age, this could be a significant chunk of her productive life, and there is no way of knowing if you will receive any profit at all!

   There is only one way that one hen could be made to be profitable in the above case, reproduction! That means that either her eggs need to be incubated by you, or she has to reliably incubate them herself! Unfortunately much of the broodiness has been bread out of the most commercially available chickens.

   This brings me to my reason for being at this particular auction, and also why I spent so much money myself. My goal is to produce a reliably reproductive flock! On the homestead, eggs are not the only reason to raise chickens. We raise our chickens for meat! Constantly having to buy chickens to butcher defeats the purpose! Therefore, we have to come to the point where we have a reliably productive flock, that provides both meat and eggs.

   To my way of thinking, this means cross-breeding! We need to breed the instinct back into our flock, and just regular selection is not fast enough, nor does it return a strong healthy population to our coop! So this is the project I am working on! I am crossing some big chickens to some bantams, and then selecting for size, broodiness, and livability, rather than egg production! My eventual goal is to be able to eat eggs regularly, eat chicken with the family twice a week, and produce enough of my own chicks every year through natural means to make that happen!

     Follow my adventures in the next few years, as I try to reach that goal!

    Pictured above is an unseasonably warm storm that rolled through the other day.

     I am getting ready for spring. I did get a harvest from my fall garden before it got too cold. Some of the plants are still alive down there, though much neglected. Mostly I harvested mustard greens, which I thought was turnips when I planted it! Did I have mustard!!! I ended up traveling for most all of November, and the family used the garden while I was gone. Sadly while we were all away  celebrating my parents 50th anniversary, some one broke into our house, and also a dog came in and killed all my goats, and most of my chickens. Rule #1 for homesteading: NEVER travel!!!

  When I got back, I was so exhausted(and frustrated) that I didn't work as hard, or as fast as I should have to get all the mustard harvested before we had a hard frost! So a lot of it didn't make it! However, the leavings have made good winter food for the chickens(those that remain), who have been snacking on it regularly. So it has been well mowed.
   
   I have been planting my cold crops indoors already. Most came up very well, except the Golden Acre Cabbage. It was bad seed. There is not even one seedling. Going to buy seed to replace it, though it's rather late, so I will probably direct seed it outdoors.

   Next week it is supposed to warm up some, so I am planning to do several outdoor projects. One is to establish a cold frame for raising seedlings. I am also planning to rake mulch I received from a local tree service. In addition, I am going to establish a bed for peas, and fava beans. I probably will also head back down to the pig pen garden, and plant peas down there for spring along the fences.

    Does Mache ever get bigger? It is delicious, and I have been putting it on sandwiches, but talk about tiny! It has made it through the winter though! Also I have carrots that have made it through winter, and am hoping the make some carrots for me!

    Above: My Beautiful Muscovy ducks which made it through the nightmare!

     Anyway, as you can tell, winter has been rather an adventure. However, I am so thankful for a new year, and spring which is on it's way!!! Once again, I get a do-over. Thanks to God, for his incredible wisdom in designing the world and it's seasons!

Old Pig Pen Becomes Garden

 

 This week at Little Bit Farm, I am planting a late fall garden. I have a pig pen, and we have gotten rid of the pigs. I figure the ground is fertile, and and there are no weeds. So I am going to plant a bunch of fall vegetables in there and hope for the best. I am direct seeding everything. This is southwest of the barn, and gets afternoon sun from about noon on. So I am planting: Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Onions, Garlic, Carrots(and a selection of other roots), Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach, Chard, Mustard, Turnips, Mustard Spinach, Corn Salad, Chinese cabbage, Holland Tyfon Greens, Kale, Dandelions, Beets, Brussels Sprouts, Peas, Garland Chrysanthemums(Shungiku), a selection of winter hardy flowers, Broad Beans, and anything else I can find. I am putting them in late, and hoping for another month of no frost so they can get some growth before cold weather! Many of them I will cover during winter with sheets! I should get a crop.
     About half of fall and winter gardening is learning what is hardy. Many vegetables are much hardier than what an Oklahoma winter can throw at it, and with a little planning, others can be protected so that there are veggies available most if not all of winter. The key for fall gardening is to use early maturing vegetables that get their growth fast. Mature plants are hardier than baby plants.
     Spring and fall, are my main salad seasons. These days, people's view of salad is so limited. Salad can be made up of many vegetables. Even grated root vegetables can be a salad. There are so many possibilities, and those possibilities are so healthy for you! I make salad out of things people don't even think of in our bagged salad world. Makes me hungry just thinking about it!
     I have also been doing other gardening things. I planted a faith garden out at our 30 acres the other day. I have a bed out there with a wire cover. I planted plants out there, Broccoli, Chinese Cabbage, 45 day cabbage, and Buttercrunch lettuce.  Those I will visit every couple of weeks, and harvest from them. The last time I planted out there, I harvested garbage bags full of lettuce for the house. In about two or three weeks I should have my first salad from those lettuce plants. I also have another bed here, which I seeded a few weeks ago.
    Another thing that I did a few days ago, is I planted an herb container for inside the house when it gets frosty. In it, are Basil, Peppermint, Lemon thyme, Cilantro, Lavender, and a beautiful petunia(just for looks)! Those will be brought in to harvest and flavor my food all winter. Anyway, writing about all this is making me hungry, so I am going to go eat!
    

Travelin' Turkeys!

      Well the air conditioning is out here at Little Bit Farm! I kind of view it as a test. I have always been fascinated with history. One thing that truly fascinates me is just how women years ago coped with the heat. It is hard for us to imagine what a pioneer woman or for that matter, any woman of moderate means went through before the advent of modern technology! I mean these women had to do the washing, ironing(next to a stove or fire), and cooking on fire, all in whatever weather they had to face. Just how did they get along?
     In the last few days, I have done most of my truly laborious things in the morning or evening. However, I am finding that the heat is rather exhausting itself. Fortunately for me, it has been a lot cooler during our outage than it would have been a month ago.
     I have some theories about living with the heat. I think the human body learns to adapt to whatever weather it must endure. The last couple days have seemed hot to me simply because I had air conditioning before now. It is taking some time for my body to adjust. I was working this morning, and felt tremendously hot. However, I sat down here to write with an ice cold peach ice tea, and right now I am feeling pretty cool! The temperature is the same, if not warmer, which just goes to show the benefits of ICE!
    The pioneer woman's ice was hard won, if she had any at all! It had to be cut during the winter from a pond or lake, hauled to a storage barn, packed in tight with sawdust insulation or straw, and then stored all summer. Needless to say, many people did without! You can see something of the process of ice cutting here:
Amish Ice Cutting  As for me I am very grateful for my ice maker:^) However, I could live without it!
    It is my opinion, that one should never become totally dependent on anything, except God! The presence of technology is only so reliable as the people who control it! The simple truth is, that people, though many are good-hearted, are fallible! Technology today is like building a house of cards. Parts of it are dependent on other parts. When a critical part fails, the effect on the surrounding parts can be catastrophic.
    In our society, we feel so insulated from real life. We buy our food at clean shiny grocery stores. We have faith that the trucks will always run to fill those stores. We have faith that the power will always be there to power those stores. We have faith that the farmers will always be able to raise the crops to send to our grocery stores. We have faith that the food in the grocery store will always be safe to eat. People often place more faith in their ready ability to get food, than they place in God, who created all those people that make the magical place called a grocery store happen.
    The truth is, however, that grocery stores, like so many things built upon technology, are vulnerable to all kinds of things. People don't like to think of such things. It frightens them. However, we saw with Hurricane Katrina that there are things that can happen beyond our control. Sometimes circumstances change the environment around our house of cards, a door opens, and a strong wind blows through.
   I believe that there are some things coming in the future that have the potential to be that strong wind blowing on our house of cards. I homestead, partly because I want to insulate my family from that wind! I particularly think our economy is fixing to take a shift down. So the A/C going out is a test of how I'll live without it, if I have to. The following is a list of things one can do to help prepare for times when unforeseen circumstances change radically my standard of living;

1) Store some food, and essentials. I recommend at least 3 months of food and other items. Storage is not something you can live off of indefinitely, but if there is some sort of emergency in the dead of winter, such as power grid failure due to terrorists or something, you'll need 3 months before planting a garden. Cook from your food storage, don't just store, eat! Find some recipes your family likes. Don't assume that they will just eat unfamiliar food if they are hungry enough! Here are some basic storage lists: Storage List 1 
Storage List 2 (not just food)
2) Store Open Pollinated Seeds - these are not hybrids, and will reproduce true in case you must save seed to replant.
3) Build Emergency Kits for House And Cars - in case you have to leave the house quickly in a tornado or other disaster. Here is some help: Build a 72 hour Kit 1  Build a 72 Hour Kit 2
4) If you have a small space raise rabbits, and bantam chickens - Have a look at this google images site for some cool ideas for coops: Bantam coops  Bantams will produce good eggs, on very little food. They are quiet if you only have hens. House them well, and your neighbors will not complain. Bunnies are even quieter, and produce lots of meat on little food.
5) Store items for barter
6) Move to the country - This may seem radical, but it is a good idea.
7) Get a woodstove - NOT a pellet stove, a plain jane  basic two burner wood stove, will keep you warm when all else fails.
8) Go to church - We need God in an emergency, and in no emergency! Going to church helps us build our relationship with him, and it also helps us build relationships in our community with others who care about what we are going through. If you have never asked Jesus to be Lord of your life click the link below. Jesus loves you, and he died to pay the price of sin, so that you would not have to pay that price: Meet My Savior
    I love my church! I feel the Lord there, though because he is always with me every step of the way, church is not the only place. However, I know that were there ever to be a crisis, I would stand beside my brothers and sisters at Union Valley Baptist Church, and we would work together to help one another, help others in our community, and reach people with the message of Jesus Christ. That is an irreplaceable comfort! If you do nothing else in this list come to church! Union Valley Baptist Church
9) Pray and Read God's word! Petition God for your safety! Ask him to help you through it. He is there, and he will listen!
10) Get a radio and a flashlight that runs without electricity or batteries. I highly recommend one that runs on both solar and with a crank! This is a great thing to have in your cellar!

   The above is a basic list, with numbers 8&9 being the most important! Everyone have a wonderful day!!!

My Beautiful Granddaughter At Her Church. She asked Jesus into her heart this year! If she can do it, so can you!

I Live In A Weed Nightmare, But I Choose It!

Today's Eggs

      Yes, it is true. Many years my garden gets overwhelmed by weeds, and yet I don't spray anything, ever! Well I take that back, we do spray wasp nests when they are endangering people, but not in the garden. It's not a glorious triumph:^) It's more toleration!
      Years ago I studied about the effects of pest control. Yes, I did go back and read that old book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. However, it was not what mainly shaped my opinion of pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers. I studied far more than Ms. Carson's opinion. The basis for my beliefs about organic growing mostly came from simple common sense. I thought, "If something makes a biological organism sick enough to die, won't it make me sick too?". Why would I spray poison on my food? It seems so simple to me, and doesn't require a list of statistics to support it! However, the statistics are there. I'll not list them here, because the point of my discussion is not to prove that organic growing is the right way to go. In my book it is. However, my point is that my life is a fight between me and bugs and weeds, and for the most part, I surrender, at least up to a point. I do want my share, after all:^)
      Life is full of irony:^) My eldest son became a pest control operator. What is an organic momma to do? Life has taught me that we love em, we teach em, we pray for em, and we trust God! My youngest son, seriously cannot see the point either:^)  Some days I want to throw up my hands too. However, I began doing what I do for reasons, both personal, and religious. I look back now and think sometimes that perhaps I didn't explain my reasoning well enough, but more likely is that my children must make their own decisions. I made mine.
      In 1991, I went through a postpartum depression after having my second son. It was a rough time for me. I had lost two babies( yes my reproductive life was full of troubles ) at 23 weeks of pregnancy in a row before him, and the hormonal changes combined with several years of emotional upheaval rather caught up to me. However, it caused me to spend a lot of time in prayer and Bible study. The prayer and Bible study, along with some herbs helped me make it through the challenge. There was always a bit of depression that followed pregnancy with me. With my first child, my parents became concerned, and recommended therapy, which NEVER worked well for me! What they didn't understand, and what I came to understand was that it was mostly a physical change with some emotional repercussions. Ultimately I dealt with it to some extent following the births of each of my children, including my last daughter who died.
     It is an interesting thing to me how stupid people in the last several decades were about hormonally related depression! In the fifties and sixties, this was seen as some sort of personal weakness. Women were shut up in hospitals and retreats, and their children taken away from them. Women who seriously had problems were often ignored totally, and even today we turn our heads in disgust , and throw women in jail who are often suffering from postpartum symptoms, which nobody wants to discuss, and certainly not in court! Hospitals and doctors, hardly ever counsel young women on the potential for the baby blues to turn into a year long mental illness! Years ago, it was like if a woman had emotional problems, she was tainted or stupid or immoral!
   For crying out loud, we can take care of a woman who has Strep throat, but we can't manage to find in ourselves one shred of compassion for a woman struggling with a very physical illness! Sadly, doctors are even worse often than the general public! When I went to my woman doctor, she laughed and told me, "Well at least you are not hearing voices come out of your TV  telling you to kill your children, like this one lady I saw! Here, I'll give you some medication and send you to a psychiatrist.". This was the very last thing I needed to hear! I went out the door, threw the prescription away, and went and found my pastor! Through him, a man, I found what I really needed was God's help, and through my Aunt Alice, I learned what was causing my problem. Once I knew where I stood, I was able to find some herbs to help me, and a close relationship to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which was the real help I needed, an appointment with the Great Physician, and he never once talked about voices coming out of the TV!
    Well, I guess we must travel in our discussion about the weeds of life(which sometimes come in human form), back to the weeds in the garden. Anyway, after I started to recover from the hormonal changes that beset me following pregnancy it was always like sunrise! For me it was a time of great emotional, spiritual, and mental growth! During the particular experience after my second son, God began talking to me about what he wanted me to do. Why do I homestead? God told me to. Why do I grow organically? God told me to! Why have I tried to feed my family from what I could grow? Because God told me to. I felt and still feel a strong urging from the Lord to grow clean food. I have always had the strong impression that somehow either I, or my children needed this knowledge that I was pursuing!
    Therefore, I battle weeds, and bugs for God. I'd like to say I always do it in the way he wants me to, but the truth is I always feel less effective than I think he wants me to be. I firmly believe he is using this organic life I am leading to his purpose and his glory. I just wish I could live up to it all, be all he wants me to be. I've always felt that he has me here to help train others, particularly my family for some future eventuality. I believe that as poorly as I have managed to do this job he called me to do, he has used it to further our health, and our joy. It certainly has furthered mine.

After all that, now I can talk about what this post is really about:^) Here we get Little Bit Farm ready for the fall gardening season. The first pic( above)  is my tomato garden this year, which as anyone can see suffered from terrible neglect. Can anyone see a tomato plant:^)? I spent much of my summer cooking at camp, going on a mission trip, teaching vacation bible school, and a host of other activities. In the midst of it, our weedeater went out, and then my weedeating sons did too, lol! Next is the garden next to it, which was my spring garden this year. Today we harvested beets out of it. Here you can see the progress on revamping it:

   This method is really effective for working on over weedy ground. Just left the frame, line with cardboard, and fill with dirt, or barn cleanings by the time the seedlings are growing well the cardboard is disintegrated enough for the roots to get through. I will plant greens in that first bed tonight. Everybody have a great day!!!