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What a crazy couple of weeks!

2/9/2015

Our Kickstarter campaign was a success! We got off to a slow start, but picked up some momentum with just a few hours to go. We reached our goal of $10,000 which will allow us to purchase all of the seeds and gardening materials we will need for this year, which includes building our caterpillar tunnels. We will also be able to make a walk-in cooler to keep all of your veggies crisp and fresh until delivery or market day. We had faith that our campaign would succeed and we placed our order early for more chicks. They are set to arrive next Friday. I can't wait to see all of the fuzzy little chicks running around the greenhouse nibbling at fresh greens while waiting for them to feather out!

Brad and I have been on pins and needles the past few days and very emotional at times. Okay, so maybe that's just me! Pregnancy hormones are unbelievable! We slept peacefully Saturday night knowing that our dream of farming with our children and doing something that we love can continue for the upcoming season and hopefully many more to come. Thank you to all of you who supported us and helped to spread the word about our campaign and our mission to provide healthy food for our community!

To keep our minds off of the campaign we continued to keep busy with work on the farm. Brad has been working with the children and our intern, Stacey, on our small greenhouse. We built our own small 12x16 greenhouse over five years ago and have grown greens, peas, turnips, carrots, and spinach for ourselves over the years. They prepared the growing bed areas and I planted salad mix today. If everything goes according to plan it will be ready to start harvesting in early March and continue to produce for a couple more months before we put in another crop. Brad has also been working on the site where will will be putting the seedling greenhouse. The tomatoes that we started on January 18th are thriving and it won't be much longer before they can be moved out to the seedling greenhouse until they are ready to make their permanent home in the large greenhouse at the end of March.

10 days post germination

21 days post germination

This past week we started four varieties of cabbage, three varieties of broccoli, chard, and numerous pepper varieties. In just two days a majority of the cabbage and broccoli have already sprouted! As we speak Brad is busy building more shelving in our dining room for us to move the trays from the germination shelf to the growing shelves. We currently have our tray filling station set up in our dining room also. It's a bit messy, but at least it's a fun kind of messy. The children have enjoyed being able to help fill the seed trays with our seed starting mix and not have to worry about mommy freaking out cause of the dirt on the floor. It's the little things that make them happy and I'm happy to see them enjoying the process of growing food from the start all the way to harvest!

Isaac, Hannah, and Lindsey filling seed trays with our seed starting mix.

Broccoli just three days germination on over half the tray!

Three day germination on cabbage

Seed trays waiting to be filled!

Our very crowded dining room. This is not the final set up, just prep work!

Our Sunday picnic!

God's beautiful sunset overlooking the farm

It's time for me to go plant some more pepper seeds. This week we still have more peppers, tomatoes, leeks, and many more seeds to get started! We are busy, but we are loving it!

Until next time,

Tiff

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Spring cleaning or Cabin Fever?

2/3/2015

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If you are local and live in Kansas, wasn't the weather last week just beautiful? Seventy degrees in January? Yes please!!!! The whole family worked together outside a lot during that pleasant spring-like weather. We cleaned up some brush materials and miscellaneous items and burned them, Brad fixed the boy's bikes and put on new tires while I worked on organizing our back shed that we use for extra storage.

The rest of the house is waiting its turn for some one on one attention and I will eventually get to all the rooms. This weekend is supposed to be back in the 70's so I know we will be outside most likely working on our seedling greenhouse. Our first set of tomato starts are looking fantastic!

Once Mother Nature reminded us that it is still winter I no longer wanted to be outside cleaning. I didn't want to be inside cleaning for that matter either, but it had to be done. How can the house get so messy and cluttered if we spend most of our day outside? I told Brad that I was going to clean each room thoroughly. I feel like we have too much "stuff" and feel trapped and get overwhelmed by it. I decided to tackle my Spring cleaning while I had the time and was stuck inside versus doing it when it's beautiful outside and we are busy planting. I decided to tackle the three rooms we spend so much of our time in first: laundry room, school room, and kitchen.

Do you spend time on Pinterest? Brad says I do too much (he only says that cause I have 20+ tabs open of things to look at and decide if I want to pin for later). Anywho... I swoon over the beautiful looking laundry rooms that are bright and cheery. That is not my laundry room. My laundry room is our main entrance to our house. This means it is always dirty with shoes, coats, mud boots, miscellaneous tools, etc. I can hardly ever keep that room clean. I've tried. Everyone has a shoe basket, a tray for mud boots, and more than enough hooks for coats. It's getting better back there, but it's never going to be some glamorous room like you see on Pinterest. I call it a success back there as long as I can still get to the washing machine and not step on a muddy boot in the process! I worked on organizing it the other day. It's not perfect, but much better.and there is a clear path to the washer and dryer.

Next room to tackle: the school room. If that room is in disarray I find it very hard to be motivated to teach and I know they find it distracting to learn. I spent most of my weekend cleaning that room and whoa... are we ready to learn! My biggest hurdle for the school room is the game cabinet. The three youngest are always getting into it and pieces are everywhere. I spent probably two hours just putting the pieces back into the right boxes. That problem has been solved now... Daddy put on child-proof locks!!! It probably won't slow down Lindsey, but it will make it so Isaac leaves them alone for sure. My mother-in-law gave us the table we use as our main area of study. I had little desks at one point for everyone, but it is so handy just to have everyone there and I can circle around and help everyone. At times we are too close and feel like we are on top of each other, but rarely are we all working at the table at the same time unless it's an art or science project. Most of the time the youngest three and I will go to the living room to read books and discuss our lesson and then go back and do a worksheet or two. This allows the older two to work on math or reading without our disruption. Ray does most of his work independently, but still some guidance is needed. Sam can do his math and copy work on his own. We are working on his phonics and reading together. Sam has some speech difficulties so reading has not come as easily to him as Ray, but I think by the end of the summer he'll have his nose in a book as much as his older brother..

Our school room. The wooden shelf is full of art supplies, puzzles, games, and workbooks.

Mama's work station and occasional student desk when someone needs to be separated or wants to be separate from the others. The white shelf on the right of the desk is usually full of books from the library that we use for different subjects and topics. It looks like it's time to spend an afternoon at the library again!

My kitchen is never truly clean. It gets tidied up, but it never fails that my kitchen is always in disarray. I thought more counter tops would be a blessing compared to our last home, but instead I think they cause more work. I spread out and use every counter, or put stuff down on it and not put it away! (Hangs head in shame!) I read a blog post about clearing your counters off of everything for two weeks and see how it feels. Well, I cleared most of it. It's not feasible for everything to be moved. I like having my spices close by and my knife block handy. The grain mill and bread machine are too large to put away and our stainless steel Berkey water filter has to be on the island. I made the rest disappear though and it has been so nice walking into a nice, clean, orderly kitchen.

My lunch helper!

I did my spring cleaning with my new cleaning products that I got from a wonderful company called Norwex. I actually just signed up as a consultant in January. Brad and I are passionate about keeping as many chemicals and toxins away from our family as possible. We don't use chemicals on our farm, and we don't want to use chemicals in our home to make it "clean". Norwex has some great products and the majority of them clean with only water! If you are at all interested about learning about these products, please email me at serenityfarmcsa@hushmail.com or check out my website page at http://www.tiffanydilts.norwex.biz/ and I'd be happy to discuss them with you and show you how the products work. If you host a party you can earn FREE products! Now who doesn't like getting things for free?

Now it's time to go clean the rest of the rooms in the house. Happy cleaning to all of you!

Until next time,

Tiff

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T

I want to be the best homesteader I can be, while teaching my children at home in the school room and outside on the farm.