Around the House

I thought it might be fun to take everyone on a virtual tour around our house to give those who haven’t visited us an idea of some of the things that we do to promote sustainability. Most of these things we’ve done for free, or almost free, with only a couple of major purchases.

The first major purchase we made was an investment in solar panels. We had them installed in February, and we haven’t had an electric bill since. In fact, since we are still “on-the-grid,” we are a solar energy producer, and we get a check from the electric company every month. The largest check was around $120.  When you factor in the loan payment to the solar company, we have a net cost of about $10/month average for electricity.  Sorry, I’m not brave enough to climb up on the roof during the little ones’ nap, so I don’t have a picture of the panels, but this is a picture of our new electrical box system. 

And this is the component that we can watch tick backwards as we produce more kilowatt hours than we use. It’s all a bit industrial looking, but there is nothing better than listening to the whirl of that inverter while I’m hanging clothes out on the line.

I haven’t really used our dryer since May. I refer to it as the “diaper fluffer” because I like to toss our cloth diapers in the dryer for about 10 minutes, so they aren’t too stiff after hanging on the line. I wash diapers twice a week.

The second real cost we incurred was a chainsaw, which was The Hubby’s Father’s Day gift. It is the gift that keeps on giving!  Here is the firewood he’s collected and chopped since then.

Our goal is to rely solely on firewood collected from downed trees on our property and on adjacent properties. We have permission from the owners to remove downed trees. It is actually quite beneficial to remove lots of fallen trees because it reduces the risk of a quickly spreading wildfire.  We had the propane tank filled, but I hope not to use any at all this year.

This is our wood stove (with a lovely piece of The Hubby’s recycled can chicken art on top).  The wood stove is actually much kinder to my skin and everyone’s sinuses than the furnace. We have a couple of tea kettles on top, which we keep filled with water and a few drops of essential oil (I love tea tree oil), to keep the air moist all winter long.

And here is the piece we found from a thrift store that welcomes the ladies (and gentleman) home.

That’s the door of the chicken coop, and below are pictures of the inside, the chicken run, coop foundation, and exterior. The Hubby constructed the entire coop from materials we already had lying around, except for the poured concrete floor. Coyotes will dig under a coop to get to the chickens, but with rebar through the vents and concrete and stone foundation, our ladies are safe and sound all night long.

The stone stairs The Hubby constructed with stones found on our property, fortified with a little more cement.

In return, they earn their keep with faithfully provided eggs. This is one of our four laying boxes today.

Here are a few of the Cornish Crosses that The Hubby purchased from a kid who raised them for the fair. They are pretty terrible birds to have around, but I hope they’ll be delicious. The Hubby and Company will be sending them off to “Freezer Camp” after a backyard ceremony sometime in October.

Just in case any predators dare challenge the chicken fortress, though, we have Roxie, the fearless mutt who will take on anything, except a bobcat apparently. For that battle, she called in the reserves (aka The Hubby), who learned that he needed to keep an arsenal handy to throw at any stubborn predators ready to attack. The current arsenal consists mostly of strategically placed horse shoes (also found on our property).

Roxie’s other back-up is the not-so-fearless Opal. Really, though, what would a homestead be without one worthless old hound dog?

There are lots of other great things I’d love to show, like the piñon trees that are just beginning to open their cones and share their nuts, and the prickly pear, whose fruit we plan to use for jelly and wine this year. Perhaps there will be a Part Two to this post, if anyone is interested. (Are you interested?)

It’s a wonderful wide world out there, and when you’re working with your surroundings rather than against them, it’s amazingly simple to feed (and provide heat) for a family of five for (almost) free.

Hope

From Part One: Life

By Emily Dickinson

HOPE is the thing with feathers           

That perches in the soul,           

And sings the tune without the words,           

And never stops at all,           

 

And sweetest in the gale is heard;                   

And sore must be the storm           

That could abash the little bird           

That kept so many warm.           

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,           

And on the strangest sea;                   

Yet, never, in extremity,           

It asked a crumb of me.

 ----------------------------

When dealing with a stubbornly elusive disease that has no name and no seeming boundaries, there are moments when a person doubts her own strength and fortitude. Can I really get up and do this again tomorrow? Am I ready for the next symptom to emerge, whatever it may be? But as night turns to day and my own little chickadees begin chirping for breakfast, as sure as the rising sun, my feet find the floor, my hands find the skillet, and I begin another day as Mom. I manage to get up, get dressed, and do what needs to be done. I am not a strong person. I am not especially resilient. Even so, I still manage the day to day, while continually searching for meaning, reason, and answers.  Honestly, there are times when I don’t know how or even why I do it, but I still do.

And then, there are days like Friday. I went to an appointment with Doctor #7, only to be told that the latest round of bazillions of expensive tests reveal that I am the healthiest 32-year-old woman on the planet. Even as she’s telling me this, she and The Hubby are watching hives forming across my chest, which I can’t see.  I’m running a low-grade fever, and I can barely muster the energy to complete my thoughts verbally. How can any of this make sense? She tells me that she isn’t giving up, and I shouldn’t either. She’s going to find a doctor who can figure this out (which she assures me will not happen in New Mexico), and asks me to schedule an appointment in three months. Three months, really? Okay. I can do this for three more months. I guess.

The Hubby took me out to lunch to process the appointment. She assured me that I do not have cancer. There is absolutely no way that my labs could be that perfect if I had cancer. I have something to celebrate the day after my 32^nd birthday. I go home, pour a glass of wine, and get the table ready for dinner.

At 6 pm (on a Friday), the phone rings and it is Dr. #7. She’s found a study that she wants me to participate in at the National Institutes of Health. [sorry, this is a bit technical but important.]   They’re studying physical urticaria. Urticaria is a fancy term for hives, and physical urticaria describes hives caused by external stimuli (touch, cold, exercise, etc.). The study began to investigate a disease called Familial Cold Auto-inflammatory Syndrome (FCAS). FCAS involves an auto-inflammatory response that causes fever, fatigue, joint and eye pain following urticaria caused by exposure to cold. They’ve isolated a gene mutation that causes FCAS, and the protein that is resultantly over-produced. There is a medication that can stop this overproduction and prevent the auto-inflammatory response. They’re trying to discern whether this same gene mutation is also responsible for other types of physical urticaria. If so, this medication should prevent the symptoms.

I am truly stunned. I had begun the weekend coming to terms with yet another fruitless round of lab results and three more months of waiting without a diagnosis, this time without so much as another test to run or an idea of what to do next. A few hours later, I am looking at a list of symptoms that closely mirror mine and an eager team of researchers who are seeking out people just like me.  If I am accepted into the study, all of the testing conducted by the researchers will be free of charge, and I will receive recommendations for treatment from the most avant garde researchers in the United States.

This is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. This is the thing that lifts me up when I doubt my strength. This is hope. It is not resiliency, strength, or fearlessness that propels me through difficult moments. Hope is the beacon that wakes me in the morning and reminds me that I’ve been gifted another day to live and a beautiful family eager to share my future. 

There are still many unkowns. It is quite possible that this path leads to yet another dead end, but I’ve been reminded that there are always new paths to try, even if no one knows about them yet. Hope is the thing that leads pioneers into the unknown. Though I’ve been a reluctant pioneer in this voyage, I am still heralded on each and every day in my unending quest for better health and clean laundry by that feathered thing called hope. And to think, it’s never asked a crumb of me.

The Feminist in the Cherry Print Apron

I am a Feminist. Not a pants-suit wearing, ‘breaking down the boys club’ Feminist, but a  ‘Let’s tear down the current social structure and start the whole thing over again’ Feminist. I graduated from a conservative liberal arts college, where I was the annoying chick who raised her hand in classes to remind the frat boys that it is actually a felony to have sex with a really drunk girl. (I’m still not sure how I managed to make this a relevant comment in every non-Women’s Studies class I took.) From there, I jumped headlong into a career of social justice advocacy, spreading the crazy notion that every woman has the right to be happy, safe, and comfortable in her home and community.

And yet, here I am – a mother of three in her early Thirties, staying at home to cook meals, tend chickens, and hang dry laundry. Any day now, a cherry print apron I ordered last week will arrive. By all appearances, I could be the best friend of my grandmother in 1955 pre-Second Wave America, standing by her man because that’s the only choice she had. How is this a Feminist lifestyle? If Jerry Falwell could agree with a Feminist about one thing, it would be that it isn’t. Most would either say that I talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, or that I’ve forgotten my ideals altogether and conformed to societal norms of what a woman should do.

This begs the question—what does it mean to be a Feminist? Feminists vary widely in their political views, believe it or not.  Feminism means different things to different people.  There are a couple things that most Feminists would claim inform their worldview, though. First, the personal is political. Second, one should always consider the dominant social paradigm with a critical eye. It is with this lens that I view my role as a mother.

I do not believe (obviously) that Feminism has destroyed the American family, as many assert. It is not Feminism that has disconnected us from our loved ones. The fact that women can work outside the home and divorce abusive or unfaithful spouses does not destroy family values. The evidence suggests that greater gender equality directly correlates with stronger, more stable societies, and the happiest societies are the most equitable.

Americans have grown increasingly disconnected from our families as our daily lives have become a race to make more money, be more materially successful, and demonstrate our success by having our children excel in 15 extra-curricular activities. We are so busy being humans doing that we no longer allow ourselves to just be human beings.  How can we connect in a genuine way with those around us if we are too busy trying to stay on top? 

Shortly before becoming a first time mother, I heard an anonymous person at a conference say, “Consumerism is a distraction from a void created by itself.” This statement has lingered in my consciousness as I’ve grown into a woman and a mother.  Consumerist society is a snake eating its own tail, and we all lurk somewhere in its belly thinking of nothing other than how big our own portion will be in comparison to the others around us. We never stop to analyze whether we should really be in this mess, what it’s doing to us, or how we might find our way out.

As I’ve developed my parenting style, I’ve come to realize that this is really the most important lesson I can teach my children about living in this world, in this culture, here and now. I do not want them to believe the futile battleground of consumerist America should dictate their own personal goals or ideals. I don’t want my children to believe that the value of their lives is measurable by the value of their shoes. I want them to value others and themselves for the quality of their soul, for their willingness and ability to love, give, create, think critically, and contribute substantively to the world around them. If I can provide this gift to my children, then I will have done my job as a mother.

And I will have done my job as a Feminist because I will have made the personal political, not just for me but also for my children. My hope is to plant a seed that may germinate into a different understanding of what society should value, and how we, as parents, workers, friends, and community members, should define success.

To impact the worldview of our children, my husband and I strive to create an environment in which we demonstrate directly the Quality and value of using our energy and resources to act in ways that are advantageous to our family and our world. So, I’ve hung up my social worker sweater in favor of a cherry print apron. Instead of teaching strangers the practice of non-violent conflict resolution, I’m teaching my children that butchering a chicken in the backyard can be an act of loving-kindness, and how our daily actions can impact the world around us, for better or for worse.

Sniffle-icious

My three-year old Cowboy began preschool last Tuesday, which officially means he’s a Preschooler, rather than a toddler. It also means that he promptly brought home and delivered a nasty germ to the rest of the family. He attended four days of school last week and has missed three days so far this week.

Cowboy, Sergeant Princess, and I have all been stricken by a nagging fever, headaches, and our noses have been turned into extremely productive mucous factories. We are taking it one day at a time, but as the mother of a tiny eighteen month old, who always dangles on the cusp of that slippery “Failure to Thrive” ledge, a day without appetites is a day without weight gain. So, with nagging mommy worry, I set off to find creative dinner ideas to trick picky toddlers, who now have no appetites, into eating a fairly nutritious dinner —all with a whole foods goal and very little energy.

Yesterday, the Hubby stopped by the natural food store for our weekly produce shopping trip, so I had a fridge full of fresh fruits and veggies at my disposal. I was also in the process of making a homemade batch of crock pot yogurt, so he also picked up a starter quart of store bought organic yogurt. Planning this meal, I am aware of three important facts.

1.) A piping hot meal won’t do much to bring down fevers. So, the cooler the meal the better.

2.) With the snotty noses and no real sense of smell to aid them, the only flavor they respond well to is sweetness.

3.) My energy level is in the dumps.

With all of this in mind, I decided that a fruit salad would be just the thing to stimulate the kids’ appetite.

I started prep during naptime by cooking up some quinoa, using normal instructions, and making some spiced walnuts. I used the Betty Crocker recipe for the walnuts, except I drastically reduced the sugar. I used about a cup of walnuts, ¼ cup of cane sugar, ½ teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. I tossed the walnuts first with a single egg white and then with the sugar mixture, then baked on a greased cookie sheet for about 20 minutes.

During nap, I also took my plain yogurt, added a tablespoon agave nectar, a few drops of vanilla, two tablespoons brown sugar, and a bit of cinnamon. Mixed together, it makes a really delicious yogurt sauce. I placed the quinoa and the yogurt dip in the fridge to cool, laid the walnuts on some wax paper to cool, and couched it until the kids woke up from their naps.

I did the next step during the kids’ snacktime, when I’m already in the kitchen without much to do. I just diced up a peach, nectarine, apple, a bunch of grapes, and about 10 strawberries. They are in the fridge chilling until dinnertime. When it comes time to serve dinner, all I’ll need to do is dice up some banana (which I didn’t add early to avoid browning), add the quinoa, and top with the yogurt sauce and walnuts.

The kids will think they’ve had dessert for dinner (I was accused of such by my 7-year-old with a different dinner this week), but we’re looking at a total of ¼ cup of cane sugar, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and less than a tablespoon of agave nectar spread across the entire family’s meal. We’re also looking at three or four different sources of protein in this meal – yogurt, walnut, quinoa, and (if you count it) the egg white, and all the nutritional benefits of having six different types of fruit in a single bowl. All of this is also gluten-free AND vegetarian! Total prep time was about 15 minutes; total cook time was about 20 minutes each for the quinoa and the walnuts.

Boxing the Shadows

I mentioned my health problems in my first blog, and I promise you that I haven’t begun writing to the world only to find an audience for my own incessant complaints. However, my health issues have really been a huge impetus for many of the changes I will be writing about, so I think it’s relevant to provide that background. If you care enough to read this post, you’re probably waiting for the BIG diagnosis. What is It? What do you have? --- “Fancy-Unpronounceable-Latin-Term-inoma?” or “Arrogant-Doctor’s-Name-itis?” Why do you need the name? Because that is how we, as humans, understand our world. We need to name things, then lump them into groups, so that we can deal with them in the same way we deal with all the other things in that group. God forbid something doesn’t fit into one of our nice, neat little groups, and we’re required to stretch the usage of our total brain capacity from 10% to 11%.

If I told you I have cancer, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in my Abdullah oblongata or my pinkie toe. Your brain will still tell you the same thing—“she has a potentially life threatening disease that can spread. She needs chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery.” If I told you I have dermatitis, you’d think, “Ah. A skin problem. She needs special creams and to stay away from toxins, stress, and allergens.” If I told you I have anaphylaxis, you’d think, “An infrequent, but serious allergic reaction. If she stays away from the allergen, she’ll be perfectly normal and fine.”—This isn’t because You, the individual, want to minimize my health concern, it’s because you as a human have a human brain, and that’s how human brains process and understand the huge amounts of information they take in every single day.

And guess what? Doctors have human brains, too. Doctors look at an array of symptoms, cognitively sort through the data they studied in medical school, and magically (at least it seems that way to us- the uneducated patients) pull out the correct diagnosis. If some of the symptoms don’t fit into the diagnosis drawn from their hat, maybe the ill-fitting symptoms aren’t real, or are unrelated, or are being exaggerated. It isn’t because they’re bad at being doctors. It’s because they’re good at being human beings. That’s why, when presented with my symptoms, Doctor #2 said, “Sometimes, as doctors, when we don’t understand something, we just hope it will go away.” He didn’t really mean, ‘as doctors,’ he meant, ‘as humans.’ Regardless of the semantics, though, I went away-- on to Doctor #3 and Doctor #4.

Yet, I still have to get up and look in the mirror every day. I can’t just hope I go away. I am a human, too, and I struggle daily to deal with the fact that my health problems don’t fit simply and neatly into any obvious diagnosis. I often think I’m just crazy, even though my symptoms are very visible, predictable, and observable. I’ve been told by specialists that I’m not what medical professionals term the “worried well,” but I still worry well.

I have something going on—an unnamed and misunderstood array of symptoms that are very real. I might have all of the things listed above—cancer, dermatitis, and anaphylaxis. I at least have the last two, and a few more “itises and isms” to go along with those. However, the reason that I experience all of those things is yet to be determined. So, I spend much of my time playing what I’ve affectionately termed “Lab Test Whack-a-Mole,” trying to find the underlying cause of all of my daily challenges.

For the time being, I’ve been left to fend for myself against that unnamed and uncategorized thing that drives my poor human mind mad. Since I’ve been left to box the shadows, I might as well illuminate the rest of my world in the ways I know how.

So, while I wait for the answer to come down from on high (or at least from a lab tech’s microscope), I’ve decided to eliminate as many “what-if’s” as possible. One of the places I’ve focused my energy is on eliminating as many chemicals from my life as possible. I’ve found that my skin is much kinder to me when I eat more whole foods, and the more fundamental and additive-free the soaps, lotions, and fabrics I place on my body. And it is also so much cheaper! A little olive oil and beeswax is so much kinder to my blistered and peeling lips than a petroleum-based commercial preparation, which leaves me to wonder what it might have been doing to my skin all this time. It wasn’t until my skin fought back that I ever considered, “Why in the world am I slathering petroleum on my lips anyway?”

And this is how itchy skin, fatigue, migraines, vision changes, a fire engine red face, and a multitude of other bizarre distortions of my body’s normal processes just might change my life – for the better!

Our Journey from Here to There

My husband and I originally staked claim to this blogspot URL with the intention of blogging about our transition from urban-dwellers to mountain folk. We had just bought a house perched on top of a hill and surrounded by the unparalleled beauty of the central New Mexico high desert. Infatuated with all the exciting adventures we had signed up for as we signed away our livelihood to a mortgage company, we wanted to share our experiences with our far away friends and family. However, having real-world adventures often precludes one from having lots of time to sit down and coherently record the details of those day-to-day happenings, so we opted for frequent sentence-or-two updates on Facebook and gave up on blogging before we even began.

We have been living in our lovely little home for a bit over a year now, and we’ve had many of the adventures we had anticipated and a few more that were unexpected. We have fluctuated between 2 and 5 dogs, 1 and 2 cats, 9 and 10 chickens. Harley has begun brewing beer. We’ve fretted over record snowfalls, firewood shortages, record cold, stifling heat, record dry conditions, watched Los Alamos narrowly escape burning to the ground, and praised the monsoon rains. We’ve learned the wonder and danger of having large predators as some of our closest neighbors and discovered the beauty of Piñon Jays, flowering cacti, and the enormous New Mexico night sky, so heavy with stars that it’s almost no surprise when a few seem to fall from their station each night.

As amazing as our surroundings have been, we have experienced incredible challenges during our time here as well. I have developed a health condition that has radically affected almost every aspect of my day-to-day life. In part as a result of my illness, I left my job, which means that we have less available income. We have decided to rise to the occasion and make some lifestyle changes to help us make ends meet. Here’s the surprising part—we have chosen lifestyle changes that actually improve rather than detract from our quality of life. We are learning, day by day, to change what we put on our bodies, in our bodies, in our home, and how we interact with the world around us. In so doing, we are saving money every day. All the while, we’re spending more time together and doing things that have a positive impact on our health, family, and the world around us.

In my mind, I have been working through these many changes, challenges, joys, and hardships for the last several months, and I really think blogging will help to make my thoughts more concrete and help me to define how my life has changed. If it won’t hurt and it might help, then why not give it a shot? I hope to share some of the challenges that have gotten my family and me to where we are now, and what we have learned along the way.