Joys and hardships of starting from scratch

The dream of building a simple homestead meets up every day with reality.  In the dream, equipment starts, when things get done they stay done, our bodies have sufficient energy and learning from a book is all that is required to make something happen.  In the dream, I would make herbal preparations to bring in a little income to the homestead and how hard can it be to build a website with a shopping cart? 

In reality, equipment breaks at a regular pace and we're not mechanics, we get tired and sore, and not everything is covered in the books.  In reality I don't have time to spend on online marketing and building a website is about to make me pull my hair out.  Food and shelter have to be the top priority.  So every day I have to think about what needs to be done to accomplish those goals and squeezing in everything else at the end of a long day. 

Footers for dry stack block, earth sheltered house

 Lots of rainbows this week!

We poured footers for Judy's house today. Putting in the rebar and insulation were a breeze a few days ago.  The insulation board was perforated by chance for our size footer (17"x9")!  Snapping them in parts and laying them on the bottom and outside of the footer was easy.  To the outside, it lined up perfectly with the footer form. 

Lasagna or no-till gardening

Oh fall has been glorious!!!

This year we tested out a no-till or lasagna garden patch.  It seemed easy and required less money and effort than a typical tilled garden with equipment and gas considered.  Not only that, it's much better for the soil and the micro-organisms that live there.  A small patch was started in March with just paper in some places, cardboard in others and really old hay.  That's all we could get for the first patch and the hay was very old.  Should have used straw.   Not a "by the book" start, but with no real compost yet and little time, it's all we could muster.  After 7 months, the soil looks great!  Dark and crumbly already and we've done a second planting. 

Footer forms

In this picture, the primary interior mass wall footer is not shown.  The house building is moving at a slow steady pace.  There have been equipment problems, but we are back on track and the weather has been wonderful.  We're at the footer stage.  I made a drawing outlining and numbering each board length for the inside and outside track of the footers.  While Jeffrey made sure the rubble trench foundation, that the footers will sit on top, was well tamped; I cut and numbered each board for the footers.  I used 4x6's laying side by side on the ground to lay the wood on for cutting and made sure the end being cut off could fall freely to the ground so as not to bunch up the blade.  Thanks to my friend Anastasia for showing me that I could get over my fear of power tools that can cut off body parts. 

Back from my Woodstock

I"m back from the Traditions in Western Herbalism conference and still processing the experience of my Woodstock.  Gladly it lacked many things from the original Woodstock, but had the healing and transformative qualities to make it something I will always remember and cherish.  It wasn't just the conference and the tremendous amount of information that was available. It was the landscape and the people.  No cliques and every type of age, sex, color, background and knowledge level were there.  Many grandmothers and young families.  I saw amazing couples where the husband came with the wife and hung out in this beautiful place with the kids, playing; while mom and sometimes another child took classes. 

Tony Chachere cajun spice

Here is a scaled down version with no salt and no MSG:

3 Tbl Black pepper
4 Tbl Red pepper
2 Tbl garlic powder
2 Tbl Chili powder

Enjoy!

Food time!

It's too wet to do too much of anything so I thought I'd post some delicious recipes I've tried lately and clarify something about my last post.

A friend thought that I started and hand dug the septic trench by hand.  Sorry if I didn't make that clear.  The backhoe driver roughed out the black water trench but couldn't get it to proper slope because of the rocks.  If he had dug any deeper to get the big rocks out, there would have been huge gaping holes that we would have had to fill later and all the excavation we paid for previously to get the house grade (the level part) would have been destroyed.  So we had to hand hammer, dig and chip the trenches to slope properly.  It took so long that several times it rained and slumped dirt back into the trenches we had already dug out causing us to re-dig and re-dig.  I don't think it would have been possible to start the trench out by hand because of the rocks.  Now if we hadn't gone down so deep maybe?

Right now it's VERY wet outside and I can't screen dirt or do much at the site.  The clay dam finally broke from all the rains and the paths to the spring are littered with huge trees that have fallen.  So today I've been planting trees and getting ready for the herbal conference next week.  Here are two AWESOME recipes that you must try!

I used to love Pappadeaux's crawfish bisque and for any special occasion, when I lived in Houston, that is what I wanted.  Recently I found a recipe for Corn and Quinoa chowder.  So I mixed the two recipes together (sort of) and came up with: