Our Autumn Wealth

Most of our possessions this last season have been an increase in our knowledge & skill sets but friends & family are always valued too. Here our pastor is helping Mike lay the beams on the cellar after his shift at his shop was over.

Miranda LOVES laundry. She is a persistant, though not a rapid plunger & have you ever seen a baby wash her own diapers so cheerfully?

Victor had done an extra job outside of the usual realm of his chores & was paid accordingly. He then made this entire breakfast of bacon, eggs & toast on his own. He even cracked the eggs, which he hates & sliced the bread, which scared me. This is a man's breakfast, a daddy breakfast, & he is bursting w/ pride in the picture as I bestowed the crowning glory; a tiny cup of coffee.

After watching the block go up by our neighbor & helping where he could, Mike figured he could lay block himself & finished the wall so we could start the back fill.

Charlotte had an entire week w/out a single accident. I proclaimed her potty trained & Mike went & bought a ginormous balloon for her. Thomas lasted one week until everybody decided to take a train ride at once & jumped on him. She happily threw him away which relieved me. We still have shreds of our last balloon that won't be parted w/.

We thank God for allowing us more wisdom & control, & hope that these new skills will be a blessing to others as He leads.

Gifts Galore

This fall has been so much fun & very busy. We had lots of family visit us throughout the week & as usual we got to go out & see new stuff in our area. We're not usually proactive in our sightseeing & almost never knowledgeable in where we take our guests. We go & explore along w/ them, which it probably oughtn't to be like that, but it is. Here's from a walk we took my mother in law dragged us on. It was beautiful! But Miranda is officially too heavy for me to climb mountains w/ her on my back, this was her last long trip in her carrier.It's another reason I'm grateful that we can homeschhool. On our mountain walk Victor kept running ahead & I threatened to put him in a kindergarten classroom on a Tuesday morning instead.

"Ahhhh! You'll never do it, I won't let you!" he screamed diving up a side trail that I couldn't climb w/ Miranda on my back. We all laughed & Mike followed him up.



This is from my father in law from the local brewery. He gave me a "growler" (Half gallon) of pumpkin ale. It was SO GOOD! I drank 3 pints after a heavy meal which in hindsight is gluttony & 1 pint too many for a sitting for me. So I drank & blogged. I'm a much freer talker w/ a drink in me. You take the jug back & they'll refill it for $10.00.
This is from my aunt though she mightn't have known it. She gave us some money to fix or get a new washer as ours just completely flooded the house twice for 2 different reasons. Mike matched her & I got my wringer. English people call it a mangle, which I like better. It puts a wonderful crease in diapers, cloths & towels & is a wrist saver.

This was from Mike. He got tired of seeing me carry buckets of stuff everywhere & waited until he could afford steel handles (he accidently snapped the wooded ones off of our last one) & a run flat tire. The goat shed got a very thorough mucking, the gardens have been amended & it's also served as a cement hod for the root cellar.

Apple sauce from deer apples. It's a little more work but much cheaper & maybe you can't tell but Mike got me some Tattlers. They work great!

My kitchen is prettier thanks to mom & her friend Bill. They brought me her old buffet & I'm using it as a sideboard. Or a credenza. What is the difference? I don't know, but now I've a proper place for table linens, aprons, napkins & miscellaney. The only bad part was when I cut off a head of garlic & dirt would fall into the tea cups. The garlic is mostly in the ground now.

Isn't it a pretty piece? I have been so blessed this season by neighbors & family. The visits were the most wonderful, especially since there were years between them. It's been a very whirlwind season & I'm afraid winter following will be dull.

Mud, Glorious Mud

I'm a little behind in posting this but one of the biggest adjustments to living in the land of no pavement is the mud.

One of my favorite things about my clothesline in Va. (this will sound silly) was the circle of grass beaten around it. I would rotate my hanging spot every week so the spot wouldn't get too bare.

You can barely see it but it's there. Pretty grass!

Let me tell you a bit about our mud. Our mud is red. It is thick. It is sticky & w/ a steady supply of snow & rain from Nov.-Feb. it is prevalent. I didn't care so much last winter but then we got goats & our mud became even more special. Now w/ goats we have muck.

That's what I step in to hang clothes. If the clothes fall or the goats get hungry for a cotton snack I have holes & red dirt that stains forever. I'm tempted to lay my clothes in the mud to color them uniformly, ha.

These are our main steps, though not the front steps. We are very seriously planning a small porch here in a year or 2. Yes, that is poo you see, they are not allowed on the steps but they love the warm wood. Their platform doesn't get sun until mid afternoon so until a dream porch is realized we just deal w/ the morass.

Most of the mud ends here in the appropriately titled "mud room". I think "laundry room" sounds pretty but that is truly its secondary function. I vacuumed that carpet remnant 20 min. before this picture was taken. Mike tells me not to bother when it's rainy for a few days but until I built the boot elevator it got tracked into the kitchen pretty frequently & muddy boots lay everywhere getting tripped on. It was a family headache. I actually only slapped together the top tier out of some scrap, the bottom is a very sturdy wooden crate. Mine has weight limits, that soap bucket had to move after I made a new batch.


Any unexpected trials in a new house of yours?

Prayer Closet/ Quiet Time

One of my favorite privileges as a housewife are the unexpected pockets of prayer. Right now, I am not up to waking up at 5:30 to read & pray. When I did do this I would usually fall asleep & feel angry & disappointed at myself. To escape the negative feelings, I pretty much just gave it up, this being before my conversion. Ironically enough, the more time saving inventions we've done away w/ the more time I have to pray. I have seen some people take literal closets & rooms & convert them for the sole purpose of prayer. I need all of the closet space I can get so I have not one, but two main prayer spaces. See top & my favorite:

I'm seldom alone out there as the baby seat testifies but she doesn't mind as long as I throw in a song, lol. And I'm sorry, the top picture means that any prayer time is prayed away & scrubbed up; this is what is usually going on if there is any praying to be done:

Have you got a spot?

Detergeant w/ Pictures!

Laundry detergeant that is. I've made my own for a year or 2 & I'm thankful for having garnered the experience because now there almost isn't a choice, ha ha. I meant to post this back in Va., but welcome to my old kitchen, I'll see if I can post a new house tour before the baby comes. I know these are all over the internet, but one more can't hurt.

Firstly the ingredients:

-A shredded bar of soap (I am the only one I've read of who uses Octagon. Fels Naptha, Zote or Ivory bars are the others that I've read of but never found in the stores around Va.), 1 cup of Borax & 1 cup of Washing Soda. NOT BAKING SODA. Washing Soda is hard to find, I used to get mine at the Commissary or Kroger. I have no idea where I'll go now, still looking. You can get it off of Amazon, I've seen the links. I've also found that grating soap falls in nicely under one of those productive watching tv or listening to something on the computer activities. Children like to help too & cats will hang around. Something about the smell of fresh soap makes cats crazy.

-Add your shredded bar of soap to 12 cups of water & stir until the soap melts.

-Add your Soda & Borax & stir them until also dissolved. Please do be cautious, this is the concentrated part & while I'm not, some people may be sensitive to the smell. Also it's pretty hot.

-Pour 8 cups of hot water into a bucket w/ a lid. For this I use my tea kettle & any bucket should work. The Costco ones are the perfect size. It doesn't have a by volume rating, only that the original powder was 28 lbs. A lid is a must w/ children around.



-Add the soap mixture to the hot water & stir.



-Add 2 gallons + 12 cups of hot water & stir yet again. Please be careful, this is heavy & hot. If there are small children around you'll probably want to move it all to another room like the garage or outside before your bucket gets too full & heavy.




Let it sit for 24 hours & voila! You've got about 200 loads for pennies on the dollar.
Some quirks; I can't vouch for 200 loads exactly; I did keep a talley of diapers for one bucket & it washed 86 loads of just the diapers, so 150 is proabably closer. My bucket just says 200. You'll want to use 1/2 a cup per load & while it is gross initially; (it looks like snot or egg drop soup) your clothes will get CLEAN. Don't be dismayed at lack of sudsing action during your agitate cycle, it is a low sudsing soap. If you want it to smell pretty add some tea tree or lavendar oil. I've never used the stuff, so I can't say for sure how much to use. For a whitener I recommend the sun. It just can't be beat.
For a cost breakdown, go here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm, she's got it to .71 a batch.

The above recipe is for a double batch. 1 bar of Octagon is around .84, so it works out pretty good for us. Enjoy!

Boring Alert: RV Schedule

It has been nothing but busy here. You would think that living in dramatically smaller quarters would mean less cleaning, but I have found the opposite to be true. We need to shop more often for less quantities due to lack of storage as well. Our routine goes something like this:

12:30-6:00- Charlotte wakes up ravenous needing to eat NOW. We lay back down together if it's after 4:00.
8:00- Everyone is awake, though only the children & I are about. It's averaging about 55-60 degrees in the camper during the AM. Cid stays in bed because there is no room to maneuver w/ 2 adults moving around. I get them dressed & make them breakfast. Charlotte is like a hobbit & this is her second breakfast. We do our chapter of Proverbs or Bible story while they eat. When they're done they do their chores. Victor feeds Buck while I water her, then he runs the Swivel Sweeper (Great for RV's! Charlotte broke it, but it fixed easy w/ 100mph tape.) over the floors & I do the dishes. Charlotte gets a rag to wipe the benches & cabinets. She also likes to stand on the couch & wave the scrubby brush over everything I've rinsed.
9ish- The children & I go to the Washhouse to start laundry while Cid makes breakfast & leaves for bank/property business if he's not gone already. Laundry is an every other to 3 day chore. Diapers are every other day; diaper days are longer because I wash them by hand in the laundry sink. It's not a full washer load & I'm not paying 1.50 for a half empty washer. If sheets have been soiled that's different. Non diaper & wash days are turning into library story & shopping days.
11:00- We're eating lunch & the windows are open!
11:30- More wiping & Swiveling, maybe a deeper cleaning on my part. This is the first time all 4 of us have had to share a bathroom & it needs a swish & swipe.
12:00- This could be collecting the laundry, doing our read aloud, a craft, a walk, playing on the swings, looking at a property, maybe checking my email? Afternoons are pretty open.
1:30-2:00 Charlotte has her nap & Victor gets a snack. I'm trying to get him to do some school, but he's usually tired. Tired, but not sleepy, I have plans for this later, but not in the camper. Sometimes he'll take the trash out or collect firewood w/ daddy. He likes to tell me rambling stories about crazy stuff, sometimes he does fall asleep & I can get the laundry folded & put away.
4:00- Charlotte gets a snack & she &Victor play together; I get to clean between refereeing & prepping for supper. Close the windows.
5:00- I'm cooking (or we're eating out!) & Cid is home telling me what all he found out during the day.
5:30-6:30- Victor often will take longer than this to eat if you let him. He has so many thoughts & observances to share his food is always cold & unappetizing by the time he gets to it. Sometimes a dessert bribe will motivate him, but more often it goes to the fridge for Charlotte's midnight snack.
6:30- Supper clean up & the usual tidying up chores. It's starting to get chilly by about 4:30, so everyone is more anxious to get inside. They play or read to each other for an hour unless it's bath night.
7:00- Baths or shower.
7:30-Teeth washed, stories & prayers.
8:00- Lights out. I generally either shower, finish dishes or prep the coffee pot in no particular order. Or I'll do all of that at 9 & sit w/ Cid for an hour so we can talk outside by the fire.
10:00- I'm done!

This is general, we might have gone to look at a property, shot guns w/ the family, or something.
Other news is forthcoming, but I'm 1/2 an hour past my bed & as yet unshowered. I'll try to post something tomorrow, hopefully shorter.

RVing Experiment Day 4

Laundry at the campground I can see will get to be an expensive affair. The day before Cid had deployed the awning. We don't think we did it right, but it certainly served its purpose & more; as my new clothes line. A wash is $1.50. Drying is the same. I only washed & dried 2 loads, no separating colors & it was a chore to always be scrambling after quarters.



On Fri. the day before we left my new washing machine had come in from http://lehmans.com/, the Rapid Washer. I've also seen it called the Yukon Plunger, which is exactly what it is; a steel plunger, but fabricated in such a way as to force the water & detergeant through your fabrics using less of both. There is a laundry sink in the bath house, so I decided diapers would be my experiment. I knew hand washing clothes for a novice would be hard & to that end I was also frantically trying to locate a wringer in good shape, but it wasn't to be. I do keep a washboard under the bathroom sink at my house, but that's only for pretreatment.



The Rapid washer is wonderful! It did take some muscle, but I think I overfilled the sink. I had watched a demo & they washed in a bucket. I put the diapers in to soak, took my shower & came out to plunge, changing the water twice, rinsing them individually & wrung them out. It was the wringing that gave me a blister, I plan to intensify my search for a wringer. As to drying, I had no line, so I broke down our camp table a bit & used it as a rack & then just started clipping to the awning.



As it happens, all of the weekly rentals face north so my sun exposure wasn't that great. It's also cooler in the mountains & this gave me some valuable experience for which I'm grateful. As much as I hate to do it, the flannel sleep diapers I made will have to go. They're super absorbent, but need more than a day to dry. The prefolds are only slightly less so which leaves...flatfolds! I remember reading this recomendation by Carla Emory & I don't know many to buy, but 1 of Charlotte's evacuations is more than that can handle even w/ a doubler. So, I guess I'll just work harder to potty train her when we get out there for good. Flatfolds dry in about 3 hours on a cool north facing day & come out the cleanest.



Other fun things we did include touring the Linville Caverns, a small little cave system, but w/ some neat stories. According to our guide, North & South soldiers would walk a 1/4 mile through thigh high water just to reach a sandbar to sleep on. I guess they were AWOL, they had a fire going under there & the smoke coming up from the ground is how they were discovered. A couple of boys got lost in the 19teens 7 took 2 days of walking through that cold water in pitch blackness. They were saved but found w/ cuts all over & severe hypothermia. Also, it only takes 6 months of solid darkness to lose your sight forever. I had never heard that before. There were beautiful speckled trout all around & giant rocks & paths to climb, it was fun. My nieces drove back to Ga. & Fla. from there & we all went home.

I've had so much to blog about it overwhelmed me & never got done. Last month in a nutshell...

-Our house is on the market.

-My sister had her 3rd baby in the car.

-We are likewise unexpectedly expecting #3, about 11 weeks now.

-Husband has been outprocessing & has officially been a civilian for 3 & 1/2 hours now. Victor is trying to persuade him to grow mutton chops.

-Lots to do to downsize & vanilla up our yard. We have a rainwater collection system in place, the main garden is down, & the children & I have slowly but surely getting the raised beds down. The homeowners association finally noticed my clothesline after 4 years & spoke to me about it. I knew it was illegal, but the dryer was eating Victors diapers, so up it went. They asked me to make sure the next owner had no access to it. Appliances convey on our listing, I had thought about adding solar clothes dryer, but I guess not.

Victor is going to start some kind of schooling routine this year, I ordered the Rod & Staff pre-K. It ought to suffice for K too, they don't seperate them. I got him some little Jewel Bird books too, we borrowed some from a friend & we really enjoyed them. That's all for now, some pics & we're off to the library.

If anyone know how to post pics where you want them I could use help. I upload them & they kind of just land wherever they may, but not w/ out a lot of frustration.

Laundry Rambles

The last 2 days have been gorgeous, I had my diapers & clothes on the line; (the diapers look wretched from Nov.-Feb)my mother in law was asking me what my limits were temp.-wise w/ hanging clothes, but I don't go by temperature. It's kind of neat to start a load of clothes on the line & feel the pile freeze into fantastic shapes 1/2 way through. I DO wear gloves, I would call it a must. I wear some cotton glove liners I found from some NBC TA-50 I thought I had turned in years ago & some black rubber gloves w/ ruffled polka-dot cuffs. My limits fall between the hours of sunlight. There is just not enough sunlight from Nov. to Feb. to dry my clothes. I didn't know that until this past season, I'm coming to my first years colmpletion outside drying. I was folding a load of baby clothes now out grown for the attic & though there were some stains, they were only on the inside of the clothes, not on the outside where I face towards the sun. Praise God for UV! Yesterday Victor was feeling better & Husband was home because he's attached to 10th Mtn Div. They had the Mon. after Superbowel off, so he chopped wood & the children & I had a picnic lunch by the pond. Jackson, our cat who quite possibly belongs to Satan & has caused $100's of dollars worth of damage to the trim & carpets is now an outdoor cat & walked w/ us, meowing the whole time. I think she's clausterphobic. Oh, it's to bed I must go.