The Laundry Line

Hello all you city folks that are dazzlingly jealous of my fresh crisp laundry! No ironing needed, btw!

This is the clothes-line that my sweet lover built for me. I’ve been wanting one for years and have had the wires hung up at different places, just draped here and there. It looked a little like white-trash (BTDT…. lol!) but I don’t care. It is sure nice to let the clothes dry in 45 minutes of clean, fresh, desert air, than it is to let them dry in 45 minutes of either our previous electric or now gas heated dryer. IT’S SO SO MUCH NICER.

So, we’ve been her for a few years without a line and I threatened to wrap the wires around the vinyl posts of the back patio. I threatened more than once or twice but never did it. This set-up with the poles is much nicer and won’t damage the posts. I’m thankful Wes had the time and materials to do some welding. Doesn’t it look great!?

The down-side to not having a manicured lawn is that if the wind blows any clothes off the line they get PRETTY dirty on the dusty, sandy ground. We do get some gusts too. Twice the wind has lifted our trampoline off the ground and set it down somewhere else. Yeah, I know! Unbelievable! I’m totally serious though. And yes it’s a full-sized trampoline.

So! I was thinking today about the things we buy out of convenience, since I don’t need dryer sheets anymore. I wondered how many things we could really do without, make do with what we have, or make ourselves with our already available resources. Such as lotion, shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, paper towels, tissue, and toilet and other paper products for the home. I wondered how difficult it would be to incorporate more cloth items like feminine pads and diapers and baby wipes.

This laundry line is a baby step toward being more efficient with our resources, and more self-sufficient. I have many plans in the works and will share them as I go. Thanks for reading and pop in again.

Composting

Well, Rachel inspired me to try out vermiculture, or worm composting.

So I got some worms from a lady in my neighborhood that uses this method to compost the manure from her sheep pen.

Here are some pictures of me making a home for them:

Drilling air holes. Power tools are for women too.

Here, I’ve put in a bit of shredded paper.

Then, I added some bits of cardboard, and some broken twigs that I cut out of the Autumn Aster bed.

I had some helpers breaking up the aster stems. Don’t you love the “garden” gloves they found to use while helping me? My children are Adorable!

I mixed this all up added some water till it was nice and mushy, but not too sloppy (we don’t want our little fellas to drown now do we?) On top of all this I added a few big gobs of straw/manure from the chicken coup, more water. And then, I popped the lid on and set it in the sun so it’ll get nice and steamy and ready for the worms.

In the meantime, while they are waiting for their big farmhouse, they’ll have to settle for a small townhome under my kitchen sink. I’ve added a little bit of straw stuff, an apple core and a tea bag, just till the bin is ready. You can see one of the little guys on the far rim of the container. Woohoo.

Here are the worms. They are not regular nightcrawlers or earth worms you buy in a bait shop. These are composting worms called redworms, aka red wrigglers.

So that’s my fun Saturday project… yes still it counts as school.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How does your garden grow?

Here’s the flower bed I put in a few summers ago. The irises are doing well. I’m really pleased with the way it’s turning out. Later in the summer the sage bushes will be flowering the prettiest dusky purple with honey bees buzzing all over it. I love it!

This is the trellis that Wes built for me for Mother’s Day last year. Shame on me! I haven’t sealed it yet. That was the deal: he built it, I was to seal it. I need to get some linseed oil soon!

This is our peach tree blossoming. Last year we had a cold spell that froze all the blossoms and we didn’t get a single peach. I’m hoping that we are past all that for this year. We’ve been watching the forecast just in case. The weather has been so nice, but we had a couple cold nights this week. For a few nights, we covered the trees with tarps and pulled extension cords to dangle  a light bulb over a branch beneath the tarp, hoping to  avoid the catastrophe of last year.  Keeping our fingers crossed.

This is our lettuce bed. The rebar dome is for the plastic we used to create a mini greenhouse type of situation. Since lettuce is a cool weather plant we started it super early. Once it starts warming up in the desert it doesn’t stop.  We’ll hit over a hundred degrees way too soon for lettuce to mature if we wait for the last frost date. Behind this box you can see the other boxes with beets, spinich and other misc. good things in the ground waiting to peep out. To the left you can see Wes watering the baby peas. YEAH!

Initiative in My Big Boy.

Andrew has always had a wonderful sense of initiative. Just in case anyone thought it was something I did, it isn’t. Perhaps I did encourage it quite heavily when he was little and I had baby after baby that made me depend on his help bit more than I normally would have. And, we used to listen to a story/song cd called Patch the Pirate goes to the Jungle, in which Palumbo Pygmy sings the Initiative Song. We love Patch!

For whatever reason, Andrew really does thrive on being helpful. If ever I have difficulty with an attitude of his, I give him a job and watch the selfishness melt away and the confidence blossom. He likes work.

Here he is, today, cutting the Scotch Thistle sprouts with a shovel… in the neighboring lot no less! No one asked him to, he just knows that they spread like crazy and we don’t want them on our property. Isn’t he thoughtful? What a great kid!

The Boys and their Lambs

In the last entry, I mentioned the boys’ lambs, so here are some pictures.

We have been raising lambs for 4 years for the 4-h livestock program. I think that it’s been very beneficial for the development of character and diligence. I love to see my children growing out of the selfishness of babyhood and developing the skills of caring for something besides their own wants and needs. I have seen them becoming more consciously thoughtful. They also learn a lot about investing and money management, much much more than I ever did in public school.

It’s David’s first year. He’s still learning and struggling to train his lamb for the show ring. It is a difficult job. They both will have to enter the ring without any sort of halter and show their lambs using nothing but their hands. Andrew has a real knack for it after training three others. SO, the rest of this month will be the most important days in training. Then, off to market they go. It’s bitter-sweet for us to see them go. They are such a hassle, but we do love them so. We feel proud to be offering such good healthy clean meat to whomever will be the buyer.

The Lambs have just been sheered and in a post coming soon I’ll show you what we do with all that wool.