Get Farmin

According to Webster's Dictionary the definition of a farm is a piece of land used for growing crops or raising animals. : an area of water where fish, oysters, etc., are raised. This definition doesn't specify the amount of land needed. I live in town, but I grow crops and I raise animals. Do I live on a farm?

On social media a mom posted that a kid at school told her son that he wasn't a country kid. I would say that you can still live in town and on a farm according to Webster's Dictionary. Just because your closest neighbor is 20 feet from your house versus two miles doesn't make you an less of a farmer. Its all in what you do with your land. I know people that live on five acres, but they don't grow crops or have any animals. In my opinion, what is the point of that? If your going to call yourself a country kid because you live on five acres but don't do anything but mow the grass and play video games (no offense to gamers), that city kid that grows a garden in the back yard is more of a farmer. 


I read that when raising your kids you have to have the end in mind. What do you want your kids to know when they are adults? I would say that my parents are always teaching me new things that are skills that I can pass onto my kids. Today my parents brought down a kiddy pool for my kitchen chickens (check the last post) and gave me some tips to help. I have the skills that will feed my family, and that is a skill that I hope all my children will possess. Agriculture skills are a rarity in America. (But when the zombie apocalypse happens we will be fine.) These skills are really important to pass on. 

Putting the labels aside and where you live, if you can master a skill like growing or raising your own food you have the potential to thrive anywhere. I'm proud of what I can teach my kids, and I hope that people will read this and start farming. It's a thing of beauty, and a real art form.

Kitchen Chicken

We bought a dozen eggs for 99 cents on Friday. It doesn't make sense to have your own birds laying eggs when you can buy a dozen eggs for next to nothing with no labor involved; or does it?

We bought six pullets (baby laying hens) at the local farm store. We live in town, so right about now you are probably pitying our neighbors not to mention town ordinances, which I won't go into. So how will this work?

Right now the happy little ladies are in a tub with thick bedding in our garage. My husband is building a mini chicken tractor that will be moved to fresh grass everyday. Once they are fully feathered, they will find their new home more than accommodating.

Chickens are omnivores, which means, like us, they eat everything. So instead of throwing away our kitchen scraps we will create a buffet for the little ladies. The chickens are the ultimate recyclers. They eat kitchen scraps and in return give us eggs. This also cuts down on the feed bill.

The boys love doing chicken chores. First thing in the morning we are out in the garage. The boys crouch down and just watch them peck and scratch. We fed them a little cabbage, and we just watched them. It was very entertaining, kind of like feeding bread crumbs to ducks by the river.

You get what you pay for is a common saying that I think we forget also applies to food. Those 99 cent eggs were from a chicken house with hundreds of thousands of other chickens. I won't go into the details, but it's factory farming at it's best. It's what makes Iowa the number one egg producer in the country. However, there are consequences. Those eggs have to be washed and sanitized, rightly so, which leads to chlorine being applied to a permeable egg shell. I guess I would rather have chlorine than salmonella, but it also leads me to the actual nutritional value. Do you prefer a light pale color yolk or an orange rich color? I'm not used to a darker color, so I prefer the lighter color yolk. Even though the darker color is what will really give you the most nutrition and usually doesn't come from factory farmed egg.

This is all just food for thought when you might think we are eccentric for having laying hens in town. Start thinking outside the box when it comes to your food, literally outside the processed box. If wecan do it on less than a quarter of an acre surely you can too.

Gummy Wigglers

"Let's get Daddy's gummy worms and do an experiment." My 5-year said as he pointed to the bag of gummy worms disguised behind a dish on the top shelf. His plot to use science to get the gummy worms worked beautifully. I couldn't argue with his his reasoning, so I reached on tip toes for the gummy worms.

I didn't have time to come up with a clever experiment before the gummy worms were wiggling in someone's stomach, but I really tried my best to resist them. So I went with the usual vinegar and baking soda mix.

My 5-year set the worms free to swim around a glass of vinegar with green food coloring. A bubble bath was made when he added a few pinches of baking soda. The worms started wiggling around with all the bubbles.

The real experiment was in adding the baking soda. The fun was in finding out how much will make the bubble bath flood the kitchen, and how little baking soda will still make those worms dance.

Afterward, my 3-year old made sure that the experiment worms weren't edible. They reached his tongue but went no further. I don't think I've ever seen him spit food out that fast.

 

 

 

Fun Food

 

 

Spagetti octopus, the missing piece, rainbow picinic, and dinner faces are the ways I make meals fun. I practice cooking and baking everyday. The best is when I try a new recipe with minimal ingredients and it tastes good. It gets even better when all three of my children will eat it.

My oldest child eats fruits and vegetables the most. However, the vegetables can't be mixed with other things. So casseroles and soups are a problem for him. He even picks the toppings off of pizza. He will eat most it just not together.

My middle child eats most everything. He will follow his "best big brother's" lead and refuse it at first, but once he tries it he will eat it all. He eats vegetables last, but he will usually eat them. He is a member of the clean plate club.

My youngest child, still baby but I'm supposed to say toddler, will eat or try most anything if she can feed herself. Some things I mix with applesauce or yogurt to get her to eat it. I also feed her things cold or room temperature when they would normally be warm. Hopefully, then she won't require her food to always be hot when I'm trying to get everything to the table, and she won't mind if her foods touch.

The spaghetti octopus started the meal fun. The boys and I skewered pieces of bratwurst with uncooked spaghetti. I cooked it all together, and a spaghetti octopus was born. We like it without the sauce because the bratwurst flavors everything.

The Missing Piece is a children's book where a pie shaped piece is trying to find the rest of the circle it belongs to. So for lunch I made quesadillas and made them into the missing piece.

We like to have picnics on the living room floor with cheese, crackers, fruits, and veggies. Arranging all the foods by color in a rainbow is an easy way to make sure they are eating the rainbow, which is what's recommended. Instead of asking if they ate a tomato, we asked if they ate something red.

The faces on their plates is something I do most often. It's easy to arrange the food in an entertaining way.

I want mealtime to be more entertaining without any electronics, so making food fun is something I can do. I mean who wouldn't want a hotdog waffle. Do you use ketchup or maple syrup?

 

 

 

Slime

It's a snake, a pancake, a booger; it's really homemade slime. After all the time the boys spend making mud holes and sand pies, I thought homemade slime was pretty appropriate.

I set all the ingredients out on the counter, which was borax, glue, food coloring, and glitter. The boys measured and mixed 1 cup of Elmer's children's glue with 2 cups of water. Then they added their food coloring and glitter. You can't have enough glitter. In another bowl, the boys mixed half a cup of water with 1 tablespoon of Borax. Both mixtures were put together and slime was created.

The boys played with the slime for quite awhile. The slime felt like gel that could be formed into any shape, but with not as much structure as putty. Nash rolled it into a snake while Graham made hand print pancakes. Before I knew it, mustaches turned into boogers.

I washed the slime and put it into a sealed container for more fun. They wanted to make sure it was safe from their baby sister. We had to save every little bit to show Daddy. I predict more creative slime gooness is in store when Daddy gets home. Look out Daddy.

 

 

 

Pen Pals

When was the last time you actually wrote something, like with a pen and a paper? When I was teaching, my hand was maxed out with all the writing. I remember correcting tests and counting answers wrong because I couldn't read the student's writing, and it wasn't even in cursive. Now some schools aren't even teaching cursive writing. With technology taking the place of writing, it forces me to find other ways.

A few months ago I noticed my handwriting when I made out my grocery list. It was terrible, and it felt strange to even hold a pencil. That's when I had to think about the last time I wrote something. It had been a couple of weeks. I thought that was a sad state of affairs, so my solution was to be pen pals.

My siblings along with my nieces and nephews live around the country Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado and Washington. My niece started writing letters to us, and then my nephew joined in. Now it's quite an event when we get those letters in the mail. So even though we don't get to see each other, we write.

There are a lot of easier ways to communicate, but that's the point of writing. You are ignoring technology and purposefully writing a letter. It takes more effort. And email or phone pals just doesn't have the same ring to it. It's also really nice to see their writing. It definitely says something about them.

The boys are just learning to write, and at this stage it's important to exercise their hands and build those muscles. So they spend a lot of time with Play Doh and coloring. They write their names on all their art work, which then is put in the letters.

My sons give their art work out as their letters and cards. It's so easy for them, so why have grown-ups made it so hard to do. Writing is useful, it shows you care. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone or received one?

 

Hydroponics Complete

My sons say we are growing salad, which is pretty accurate. It's really heritage lettuce, and I'm thinking what are we going to do with 44 1/2 plants. (The half is because one plant doesn't look so good.) I guess we will be enjoying a lot of salad. I'm really just excited to be growing again.

During the week my husband cut the PVC pipes into troughs and glued caps on the ends. Then Saturday he put it all together. He made mounting brackets that would not hurt the wood work trim around the windows, but still allowed for the shades to be drawn at night. He drilled holes in the ends of the troughs, ran tubing, and measured the angles so gravity could do it's work.

The first test was not successful. The pump was too powerful and shot water everywhere. I thought we would have to delay the whole thing until we got a new pump. My husband's response was, "I have an idea." He made an offshoot valve on the side of the pump, so we could adjust the water pressure. 

The second test run was more successful. We had some leaks in certain places, but nothing the hot glue gun couldn't fix. We also noticed that the trough slid around in the bracket, so that got some hot glue too.

Once construction was over I put in the directed amount of fertilizer. The fertilizer is just indoor plant food that dissolves in water. I opted for the all natural kind with the kids around.

The plants went in and we started it up. After running it for a few hours we noticed that the pump heats up the water. It gets pretty hot. Right now we shut it off periodically throughout the day to give it a break. It's a little too powerful for our little hydroponic system. My husband Amazoned another one, which should be here Wednesday.

From now on, I know my lettuce won't see more of America than I have, which is usually the case when it travels 1500 miles from field to fork. It will go from my dining room to my kitchen back to my dining room. Now I need to find some lettuce recipes besides salad. Any ideas?

Soap Cloud

In the book, It Looked Like Spilt Milk,  many different shapes are made in the clouds. My 3-year old said that our activity today looked like spilt milk, just like in the book. My 5-year old said it looked like the clouds. They were both right.

The spilt milk and cloud was really a bar of soap in the microwave. It was Ivory soap, which has a lot of air whipped into it. The air got hot and expanded, which made the bar of soap grow into the cloud or spilt milk.

I explained this activity by comparing it to popcorn in a hot pan, which they have seen before. The air caught inside the popcorn or soap gets hot, creates steam, and pop!! It gets bigger.

The heat also makes the soap soft and pliable. So after it cooled off, the boys played with it like a sensory activity. They rubbed it into a powder. This powder will later go into their bath; afterall, it is soap.

This activity is quick, easy, and fun. It also leaves your house smelling like Ivory soap, and it cleans your microwave. I highly recommend it.

Note: Ivory soap is the only bar soap that has the extra air, so other kinds won't work. Also, I microwaved the soap on high for a minute and a half.

 

 

 

Hydroponics Process

We live in town on less than a quarter of an acre of land with the south side of our house ten feet away from our neighbor. (That ten feet is no exaggeration.) With three busy children, our backyard is dominated by play sets, sand boxes, bikes, balls, and boy created mud holes. When I taught I got my Horticulture fix at school with the greenhouse that was bigger than our yard dominated by two hydroponic systems. Now with our current situation I've had to get pretty creative for that Horticulture fix. I never thought my hydroponics experience would come in handy.

Hyroponics are plants that are grown without soil usually in nutrient rich water. At the high school, we grew lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries. The lettuce and tomatoes started as seeds, but the strawberries were shipped from Amazon as bare root. The students would monitor the pH level, nutrient level, and all other aspects of growing a crop. Once it was harvested, we enjoyed BLT sandwiches and the rest was donated to the food pantry. The last lettuce harvest produced more than 25 pounds.

To replicate the hydroponics system at school, my idea was to mount it on the inside of the south facing windows in our house. I didn't want to put grow lights in the basement with a hydroponics system. That might seem a little suspicious, and I don't want to draw a lot of electricity when I don't have to.

I ordered lettuce seeds and rock wool cubes from Amazon. It was at my door two days later, so the boys and I started planting. We soaked the rock wool cubes in water and put a seed in each. Two days later they were germinated. In less than a week we had lettuce sprouts, which really put the pressure on building the Hyroponics system.

I came up with a design, and my husband interpreted it to get the supplies for building. The design is pretty basic. PVC pipes act as a trough running across the window then connect to another pipe and another until it empties into a tub with a pump. The pump will push water to the top most pipe to start the cycle over again. The plants will sit in the troughs with their rock wool bases.

The building process is still ongoing and will probably require another blog mainly because my husband and I have different approaches to projects. I like to just jump in and learn or problem solve as I go while he likes to think about the project and come up with multiple drafts and spreadsheets and designs. We even each other out this way, but sometimes it's quite a process. However, we are all very excited to grow our own food in Iowa during March.