Monday Morning Musings..I hear voices

It's quiet here in the house. But my head is full of noise. No, I am not hearing the kind of voices that need Mental Health attention. They are the kind that are just my thoughts running amok. Honestly I think most women have these kinds of voices.

Did I turn off the coffee pot?     

   

  Did I forget to pay the cable?  

  I know we need to save more money, but how?

Then there are all the requests from your family.

Honey, Can you....                       Mom, where is my......                           Why can you?......



It can really be overwhelming. As women society seems to place many hats in our closets for us to wear, from Wife, Daughter, Mother, Sister, employee, to friend.


The hardest part for me is to figure out how to take care of my own needs. I feel guilty when I do, but at the same time I still fee guilty if I don't.

How can you pour into other peoples cups when your cup is empty? This is a question that I was asked not all that long ago. The answer is mainly simple......you can't. But yet we do it every day

My goal is to spend 15 minutes a day on simple self care. This could be a cup of coffee while sitting somewhere quiet, working on my 15 minute devotionals, or listening to a pod cast. It completely depends on my mood that day. 

What are the things that you do for self care?

Guest Post: Life as we never knew it

 As winter reluctantly began thawing into spring in NH, my husband and I were looking forward to some long-needed remodeling of our home. We had just replaced the roof and gutters and were happily choosing colors for a new stone walkway and porch renovation. Then reports of people coming down with a new aggressive pneumonia started trickling in. By the end of March, the world had changed. Borders and schools were closing and people were fighting over toilet paper. I decided to brave a trip to the grocery store and what I saw scared me. 

They were out of eggs. And not just the fresh cartons. There weren’t any eggs in sight – whole eggs, scrambled eggs, egg whites – nothing. Not even the insanely expensive, this-chicken-has-led-a-cushier-life-than-you eggs. Then I stood on my tiptoes and saw it – a package of hard boiled eggs waaaay in the back of the top shelf. The last eggs in the whole store. I asked a very nice tall man to reach them for me and was relieved when he didn’t take off with them. 

That was the day I told my husband we were getting chickens. He said, “Well, okay then.” and that we also needed to start a garden. We’d had plenty of land to use for years, but “life” kept getting in the way. A special needs child, my chronic illness resulting in disability, issues with our well, job layoffs, and finally my husband’s cancer diagnosis. We were finally getting back on track when the pandemic hit and changed the direction of lives around the world. We were some of the lucky ones, though, if you can call having both of us solely on disability income as “lucky.” We didn’t have jobs or income that would be taken away over the next several months. We traded our home improvement catalogs for garden seed catalogs and chicken coop plans. And books. Lots of books. Books on everything from raising chickens to garden companion planting, canning, seed saving, root cellars, dehydrating - and we got to work. Thankfully our daughters were sent home from college and were able to help us set things up when they weren’t trying to navigate their classes remotely.

There’s been a very steep learning curve over the past six months, but we now have nine healthy chickens – eight of whom will be providing us with eggs very soon and one surprise rooster who does a good job of keeping them in line. I’ve dehydrated, frozen, and canned hundreds of pounds of food grown on our own land and we are making plans for next year’s garden, learning from our mistakes and hoping to repeat what went right. 

We’re getting up earlier in the day now (thanks to the rooster), but it is after we’ve slept well, knowing that no matter what happens this winter, we will have provided for our family. 

Stressed out during this time

I am sure that I am not the only one that is stressed out. It often worries me when I think about how chaotic our lives have become.

It almost feels like it is unsafe to even leave our homes. For me and my family it has really shown us how badly we have come to depend on the modern conveniences of life. 

 "Modern Conveniences? What do you mean?"

Like always assuming you can run to the grocery store to pick up everything that you need. Or that you can pick up a phone and order take out.  This pandemic has really shown how dependent we are on a system that is flawed.  When it all started we were suddenly out of basic necessities with no replenishment schedule in sight.

So after having a near major panic attack, I sat back and started to think.  How can I work with the current situation and avoid having it happen to me again. 

There came a couple easy answers to mind

• Stockpiling
• growing it myself

Stockpiling

Now I am not talking about wiping out shelves or hoarding hundreds of bottles of laundry soap. I am talking about figuring out how many of a certain item you normally use in a time frame and buying  2 or 3 extra. Hopefully taking advantage of sales and coupons to make your out of pocket expenses as low as possible. Now for example in my home we go through 3 packages of the 12 pack toilet paper a month. So I decided to buy an extra 2 packages for us. This way if it become unavailable again we won't run out, I can share with my adult kids if necessary.

Growing it myself

I have always loved digging in the dirt. Making things grow has had therapeutic results for me. So I decided that although we are in a new location without much space for a garden, I would do my very best. So by using containers and make shift raised beds I grew veggies. I had lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers plus pretty flowers. Now this in no way gave me enough to support my family for a whole year bu it gave me control in a world full of chaos.

Now as my growing season has ended I am sitting back and deciding what are going to be my next sets. 

Monday Musings...Spring is finally coming to New England.

Over the weekend I found myself looking down more than usual. At first I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for but when I found it I knew.

I was looking for the first signs of Spring. Looking to see if there were any sprouts peaking out of the ground. 

Well trust me when I say that I did find some Daffodils sprouting and some Irises too, oh and crocuses . 

By Ghislain118 

Seeing those little green shoots coming up through the dried old weeds really makes my heart sing.


Spring is such a wonderful time of year. Especially here in New England. The sap starts running and you see all those wonderful buckets hanging off the trees. 

You start to hear all the birds singing in the bushes. Feeling the warm air drifting in on the wind. 

Walking in the Grasslands

What a wonderful day to get outside. When I woke up this morning I knew we all need to get out and enjoy the sunshine. So why not grab the dog and go take a hike. 





So we drove the couple of miles to THE WASHINGTON COUNTY GRASSLANDS IBA. 


When I was younger this was all farm land,

actually some of it was a farm that belonged to my youngest brother's grandparents. So it was a joy to walk the land that I had walked on as a child. 




With all the concerns about the Coronavirus Pandemic we need to remember that nature still exists and that we need to slow down. Take the time to smell the roses and care for ourselves. 

Bring it on

Okay, Mother Nature is very moody lately. One day we have beautiful, sunny weather and less than 24 hours later it is snowing again.

In my house I have decided that Spring is on its way.. We have started seeds in the house. Right now it is Tomatoes, cherry specifically, that we started about four days ago. I now have more seeds to start this weekend. Broccoli, Cauliflower, and some more tomatoes will be in the seed trays by Sunday night.

This year I am trying a new germination trick. I have soaked cotton balls with water, then placed several seeds, usually 3, on the cotton balls. The balls are set on a tray that I am covering with plastic wrap and placing near the window. This way I can see when they start to sprout and can transplant them into the soil. This also helps to speed up the germination process and less seeds are wasted.

It is also a very useful science project for my son, who I home school. We are able to discuss the seed-plant life cycle and document it all. He loves to help me grow things and care for them in the garden.

I find it is very important that we get back in touch with where our food comes from. The best way that I know how to do this is to grow it. We will have a small garden that I am creating out of pallets in our back yard, but I am also renting a space in the community garden.

Is it Spring, Winter or Sprinter in your neck of the woods?