Just an update

Time is limited right now – between publishing From Scratch , and working on writing two more books, I’m also working on re-designing Motherhood Naturally AND starting that ministry I had posted about last year. It will include an informational website in addition to this blog, but I intend to add a LOT of tutorials to it and free online classes, in addition to classes I’ll be offering in my home. 

So I haven’t forgotten about ‘homesteading in the city,’ in fact we’re still doing as much as before and preparing to dive into several new skills this year, but because there is a lot going on behind the scenes I haven’t been posting much.

I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth…

I’ve just been very busy  being a mom, and getting my house in order.  I’m very motivated to declutter, organize and get my house into working order, and it is a very big task!  the house got out of control when Zach was born, and it wasn’t in the best of condition before the birth – I let a lot slide once I got very pregnant and there are a LOT of things needing my attention.  Slowly but surey I’m wading through it all.

I wasn’t able to finish the quilt I wanted to make for my daughter for Christmas.  I told her about it though and she wants to help me finish it, or at least watch how its done.  At this point I only have a handful of blocks that need to be added to the quilt, then do the batting and binding.

My upstairs garden is doing so-so.  I haven’t kept up with watering… Before I gave birth I wasn’t doing stairs too much, nor was I after the birth, so  lost my green peppers.  I almost lost my basil,but it’s back full strength again.  The rest of my herbs are great, I have green beans coming in nicely now, and my tomatoes I started from seed are doing well. 

I have some mixes to make up for the pantry.  Spaghetti sauce, taco, beef stew and italian seasoning are the few I can come up with.  I need to dry some basil, thyme and oregano because the spice containers are empty. I’d like to make up a couple more freezer meals, however two of my dogs need some desperate grooming attention.  I think tomorrow I am going to tackle that.

I’d like to get my office and craft room in order, and finish bringing up the kids Christmas presents.  I’d like to get back to homeschooling upstairs, and get the lower part of the house together.  Somehow, between late pregnancy and now, the living room became my office, craft room and homeschooling room.  With the amount of ’stuff’ that comes with each, you can only imagine how cluttered my living room is.  And the master bedroom which has beome a storage room of sorts! Ack!

Today as the kids were taking a bath I got the upstairs bathroom in order.  It sure needed it.

It feels good to see a difference.  I can’t wait to get caught up! 

Hopefuly after the new year everything will be back to the way it should be.  I’d like to begin including photo tutorials and how-to’s on some of the hometeading in the city type things just about anyone can do

Any day now, baby #4 will be here

I’ve finished nearly all of the projects I want to have done before baby arrives.  This includes:

- Canning chicken and beef stock
- rendering most of my tallow (I only have a few bags of fat left, which I’ll keep frozen until we get the meat grinder for my KitchenAid, then I’ll thaw, grind, and render)
- make curtains for our bedroom
- Switch the kids playroom with my office on the 2nd floor
- Make a number of healthy snacks to have on hand for the first few days after birth
- Process our latest meat order (preparing and wrapping chicken breasts in our favorite cuts, mainly.  The ground chuck is already packaged in 2lb packages)
- Get birthing supplies, baby clothes, cloth diapers and all of that baby related stuff taken care of.
- Cleaning the house!
- Get some soap curing for holiday gifts (two batches are done)

Now all i have left to do, hopefully tomorrow, is:
- make a snake to catch drafts from our front door
- Fill our freezer with easy meals my husband can thaw and heat (I was waiting on our meat order!)
- Return our library books before they all become late
- Can some cooked chicken (for an easier time making chicken potpies, I’d rather have a jar of chicken ready to use rather than thaw, cube and cook chicken)

I’m taking a much more controlled approach to this birth – I know how crazy life is with three little ones, I’m admittedly quite curious as to how life is going to go with a fourth little one (this will be our fourth in 4.5 years).  I’ve never done so much preparing, with ‘pre-baby’ projects.  I think i had a mental block on going into labor before these last few things were done, because once I got most everything done, my body started showing signs that labor will be here soon.

Thinking back, after my first was born, I didn’t really have much of a chance to rest.  I didnt’ really need one.  After our second was born, I really needed time to recover, but my husband was having a lot of trouble adjusting to Mr. Mom AND he had to return to work within a few days of the birth.  I would have benefited from some pre-baby planning like keeping the house picked up, filling the freezer with food, and having a gameplan.  With our third, i was up and back to being mom the evening after I gave birth.  I felt great!  Should I have?  Probably not.  I didn’t get back to anything tiresome or grueling, but I was up making no-bakes for my husband that evening after resting much of the day.

With this one, I really want to be prepared – whether I need extra help or not.  I want to make the transition easy on the whole family, especially my husband, by handling what I can BEFORE the baby gets here, so that when I’m in labor, I don’t have to worry about things. 

In our household, my husband is the one that brings home the bacon, and I cook it.  Meaning, his duties are outside of the home and mine are within it.  I enjoy this very much, and it suits both of our personalities and abilities perfectly.  I don’t expect anything from him around the house other than to bring home the money to pay bills, and he handles all of the outdoor stuff – car repairs, lawn work, house repairs.  In exchange, I take care of all the house chores, do my best to spend his paycheck wisely, handle kid care, homeschooling and homesteading tasks.  So when his role gets reversed 100%, it’s a hard adjustment to suddenly have to care for small children and a wife, when he’s never had so much responsibility around the house.  That’s not to say he DOESN’T help – if I need his help he’s right there, if I have questions or want his opinion on how our schooling is doing, he’s there, he helps with schooling on things that I’m struggling over teaching or the kids understanding… It’s not like he’s completely absent from our lives at home.  He drives a truck over the road right now and is gone much of the week and home on weekends, so when he IS home I’d rather spend time with him and the kids too, rather than have a list of house chores to keep him busy.  Well, even when he wasn’t working we still handled things the same way – I’d care for him, our kids and our home.  It’ satisfying to me.  Anyway…

Ideally I’ll have a big meal in the crockpot for after the birth, a clean and organized home, someone to watch the kids while I labor, and the companionship of midwives and family that I love and trust.  After the birth I’ll have showered and perhaps go to bed for a nap – or at least sit on the couch in the living room and let the kids oogle over their new brother or sister.  I’d hate to make them wait to see their brother or sister again if I went away to sleep, and I can catch a catnap on the couch until the initial excitement passes over.  My oldest daughter is dead set on watching the birth and cutting the umbilical cord.  She is so involved with my pregnancies and just loves the whole idea of pregnancy and babies. 

I had what is probably my final midwife visit today.  The baby is very low and they guess we’ll have a baby by the weekend.  I’m betting on that as well, based on what my body has been doing.  I hope I have enough time tomorrow to complete those last tasks! 

I’ll post when baby arrives!

Indoor veggies have been planted

Today I got my winter garden planted - which will be housed in my office through the winter.  I have: spinach, tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers, acorn squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, green beans, peas, carrots, leeks and celery.  Some of these will need to be hand pollinated.  I am laying a waterproof mat under my small greenhouse to catch water drips, and plan to let the squash climb my windows and the greenhouse its self.  The carrots and tomatoes will eventually move to a container on the floor near the window when they get big enough.  Now the only thing left to do is fix the zipper on my greenhouse cover as it is broken.  Then we’ll be all set

My latest research here on the homestead is on raising milk goats and my husband has shown interest in raising one or two at a time for meat.  I’m pretty sure they’re probably against city ordinances but it’s fun to learn.  And who knows – if I talk to my neighbors and they’re favorable, a little milk and eggs (from chickens, of course) go a long way to keep them from complaining…  I’ll let you know what I come up with.

Canning more applesauce!

We went to that small family orchard near where we used to live again and brought home 3 bushels of apples.  We bought one bushel specifically for canning slices and pie filling, and the lady there offered me other bushels of a type of apple I can’t remember the name of, but she wanted to get rid of them for $2/bushel and she said they make great applesauce but aren’t good for baking or canning in slices.  Sold!  Tonight I’m slowly working through one bushel of those apples (roughly one bushel has yeilded 10 quarts of applesauce tonight) as I also finish the October issue of From Scratch which should go out tomorrow. By the way, you can download a free copy of the newsletter at that link, or e-mail me and I’ll e-mail it to you.

I was blessed today by someone who just had a baby shower and had too many things – a bunch of baby boy clothes, pacifiers, and a bottle of shampoo were giften to me today.  We really think our next baby is another boy, so the clothes will be put to good use.   I was also given a ton of pants (jeans and dress pants) and cute shirts for after the baby is born.  Everything is in my size!  I am the type who has a handful of T-shirts, a nice shirt or two, a couple skirts and a pair of pants or two… Now I have a handful of nice shirts, a bunch of nice/casual shirts and way more jeans than I could ever need at once.  But I use them hard – every pair ends up with a hole in the knees within a few months so it’ll be nice to have a decent supply for a while. LOL. 

Today was shopping day at Sam’s club and tomorrow it’ll be regular groceries and picking up water.  I brought in the rest of my soil yesterday to warm up, and will be starting some more seeds in the next day or two for my winter garden.  I’m a bit late getting these planted, but it’s better late than never.

I am beginning to save the non-glossy bits of junk mail we recieve and will be using them for mulch next year.  We don’t have a paper shredder so I’ll likely put the kids to work tearing the paper into strips!  They’ll love it.

It’s also time to begin making homemade holiday gifts.  I have a lot of things I want to sew this year, so I want to be sure to set aside plenty of time for that.  Once my main canning season comes to an end I’ll be in a much better position time-wise to tackle sewing in the evenings.

Well that’s about all from my neck of the woods, I’ll let you know what I’m planting when i get around to deciding!

Fall happenings

Life has picked up its pace quite a bit!

I have a few more heads of broccoli I’m waiting on in the garden.  Some carrots are ready to pull I’m sure.  My husband already wacked the corn stalks down (we left the roots to rot over the winter and provide nourishment for the soil for next year) and the kids love having a little fenced in area to play.  The corn is drying in my backyard and will be taken to my church to be used as decoration for an outreach project they’re doing on Halloween.  My tomatoes won’t quit producing - I have new blossoms and tons of green tomatoes growing but I think our first frost is going to happen here in the next couple of weeks.  I am going to be growing a garden indoors over the winter and my husband suggested uprooting a couple tomato plants from outside because they’re still producing and see if I can’t transplant them in a container to make use of all those tomatoes I’ll otherwise miss out on.  if I use some of my tomato cages in large pots, I should be able to keep them upright.  Whether they’ll survive the transplant or not is another story.  I’ve never heard of anything like this, but we figured what have we got to loose?

I plucked the heads off my sunflowers and have them drying on my back porch.  I’m not sure if I can keep them there because the birds will find them soon enough.  the heads are  HUGE and there are tons of seeds.  They’ll finish drying in the basement if birds become a problem.  I have a few sunflowers that I let sprout from the birdfeeder, I cut the heads off and am going to dry the seeds and put ‘em back in the birdfeeder.

We’re going to get another probably 2 bushels of apples in October.  My husband loves the apple pie filling I put up (using tapioca instead of corn starch), so those jars are quickly disapearing.  I want to put up more apple pie filling, applesauce and more slices.  We opened a jar of pears that I put up a few weeks ago and they were SO GOOD.  The lady we bought them from told me she has tried to can them season after season but they go mushy on her.  I told her how I can mine, hopefully she’ll have better luck and be able to enjoy the fruit of her orchard over the winter!

I have a couple Morning Glory plants on my back porch.  I thought I’d be cute and train the plants to grow up the rails on my back porch.  Well now they’ve nearly enclosed my back porch for me.  it looks pretty, but those vines are stuck everywhere and it’s going to be a bit of a pain to remove them!  lol.  They have engulfed the watemelon I had growing from a pot on the back rail, and my aloe plant hanging from the support beams of the roof. 

My mind has turned to what I’ll do next year to maximize the harvest and make the best use of my space.  I’ve decided on the ‘three sisters’ method of growing corn, squash and beans/peas.  Somehow or another they all work together - the beans nourish the soil for the corn, the corn provides a natural trellis for the beans or peas to grow up, and the squash provide natural ground cover to keep the weeds down.  I like it!  That will free up a few rows and my squash plot for something else next year.  I’d love to grow some sugar beets and experiment with making our own sugar.  I need to move the carrots away from the tomatoes – I had no idea how bushy and big my tomato plants would get.  They’re huge!  And have shaded my carrots nearly completely.  I’ll move my cucumbers to the side of my house and train them to grow up the side of my house.  I just hope they don’t get too high so the point that I can’t reach them to get the cucumbers.  Maybe i can grow them up my porch where the Morning glories are growing instead.  I will train my squash to also grow up something, somewhere (though preferably not along my fenceline… I don’t want my neighbors thinking I’m rude for overtaking the fenceline) to maximize space.

I will be doing more succession planting, start a spring garden outside earlier (remember I moved here in May, so I didnt’ get my garden in as early as I like to), re-use that space later for fast maturing vegetables once the spring stuff has been harvested.  I’m also going to expand my garden space.

‘Sugar pie’ pumpkins will be going in so I can make use of pumpkin, and some larger pumpkins will be going in for roasting seeds and having out front as a harvest decoration.

Anything that dies will be hacked off at the ground and the roots will be left in to nourish the soil.   My husband is going to try and build me two shelves to hold some of my herb plants in one of my kitchen windows, high enough to keep out of the reach of our kids and to keep out of my way (I use suction cups with hooks on the lower window panes to hold lightweight but frequently used stuff)

Next year I’d like to grow a butterfly garden for my daughter (well, I’ll actually make this her garden, she wanted something of her own so badly this year!).  My chinese lanterns never took off this year (I wonder why?) but I want to try again next year so I can dry the lanterns and add them to our fall/harvest decorations!

I’ll also need to look into space to grow food for rabbits – one more hutch and we’re good to launch our meat rabbit production and start stocking our freezer.  Chickens may come next spring if we have the coop ready.

Preserving the Harvest

Boy has our kitchen been hot the past few days.  We visited a family orchard near where we used to live in Erie MI and came home with tons of potatoes, apples, pears and peaches that I’ve been putting up for the pantry.  Tonight I promised my husband an apple crisp, then I want to make some pies to freeze.  I’m also going to can apple pie filling.  I may be out of apples at that point, but on Tuesday we’re going back to pick up another couple bushels of apples.  I’d like to also make apple sauce, fresh juice (to drink now, not to can), and put up some apple slices.   We tend to only buy in season fruit, so apples are one of those treats we usually only buy in season beacuse they’re so expensive any other time of the year (not to mention not fresh!).  If time permits, I’d also like to put up the rest of the tomatoes from my garden I have sitting here before it’s too late, then I have 60 lbs of potatoes to peel, dice and can!  I finished the peaches we had yesterday, and finished the pears this morning.  I’d like to cook up a few whole chicken, shred the meat and can it as well for an easy grab when it comes to chicken salads and pot pies.

If anyone is familiar with the Erie area, this orchard is small and family run.  They have amazing prices on their fruit.  They are located on S. Dixie Hwy near the I-75/Summit split.  Go S. on Dixie and they’re right before the split on the right.   Please visit them if you can, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with their pricing and the fruit is just delicious!  They’ll continue to have more apples and other produce, and plenty of pumpkins as they become available.

Where has she been?

Free time on the computer has been extremely limited.  It’s harvesting and preserving season here in the Kostyu household.  I’ve been tending to the garden, harvesting vine ripened produce, canning for the pantry, and putting out my extra on my porch for my neighbors to pick at.  We began homeschooling my oldest daughter in Kindergarten last Monday and that has gone nicely so far. She is sooo motivated to learn.  The weekend came and she realized each day with surprise and disapointment “oh no! mom! we didn’t do school today!”

Each day we read a chapter from Proverbs.   Surprisingly each chapter so far has had something to do with wisdom or obedience, two things she has been most needing to learn about or hear about (I, myself, have needed to learn more about wisdom and what the word means, so I’ve been learning a lot right along side of her!).  I do believe through our discussions that she is learning and her heart wants to please God.  We bring up what we’ve read in the bible that day often throughout the day, using life lessons as reminders and examples.  Her acceptance of discipline has also hightened, as she understands discipline has its purpose and she willingly listens to us as we explain why something she did was unnacceptable and she really makes an effort to not do it again.  Lying was a problem we came across, and something I really felt was a phase.  My husband would have none of it though, whether it was play or a phase.  We will not lie in our household.  I followed his lead when it came to this and did not allow lying.  When my daughter is responsible for bad behavior, she owns up to it.  She understands lying is a sin, and is in fact one of the 7 things the Lord hates (when we came to this section in Proverbs, I drew a stick figure and we labeled the 7 things the Lord hates – haughty eyes, lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, etc.), we’re also commanded not to do it, etc.   I am so proud of her for wanting to please the Lord.  I enjoy homeschooling tremendously at this point, because I can see the fruit my daughter is beginning to bear as a result of our studying of the bible together and the way we choose to live our lives.  I can see how excited she is to learn, and BE THERE when she finally gets something she’s been having trouble with.  I like seeing the determination in her face to conquer something she’s stumped on.  And I really love to see the way she embellishes her letters with eyes, ears, hair and smiley faces….  I like being able to connect our lessons to real life examples.  I like being able to teach her God’s word straight from the bible, and teach her the values *WE* feel are important.

Anyway…  I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here or not, but I’ve begun publishing a monthly newsletter on cooking, doing and making from scratch.  In fact, the newsletter is titled ‘From Scratch’ and while it focuses on cooking, there are also columns on gardening, preserving, raising meat/eggs, making things from scratch and doing what we can to reduce our dependence on stores and spending money.  Cultivating the skills of our grandparents and great grandparents and bringing them back into use.  What had once been a lifestyle we had to choose for survival, has now become a lifestyle I’ve grown passionate about.  I love to share what I’ve learned, and learn from those who care to contribute their knowledge.  I hope you’ll join us!  I’ve made a free issue available to download. Just click on the ’subscriptions/newsletters’ category.

In addition to writing my own monthly newsletter, I’m writing a ‘From Scratch’ column for New Harvest Homestead which is a 6x/year publication for Christian women who desire a simpler life.  This newsletter is also a great resource, an awesome inspiration, and something I highly recommend.

Homeschooling set to start

My oldest daughter will be entering grade K here at our home.  She’ll be 5 in February but has shown so much growth and interest in learning.  I’ve evaluated her and found that she’s more than ready for K, so here we go!

In the ‘do it yourself’ type spirit that I am, our homeschool is eclectic and I’ve planned on making our own curriculum for the first few years.  There are so many resources available for free online, and at the library, that for me it would be silly not to take advantage of this money savings.  I’ve put together our curriculum focusing on suggested topics for grade K.  For each subject I have a folder with her work in it – I found a free phonics workbook that I printed out and put in the folder, a bible based book for K’ers to teach them about God and Jesus, which goes in another folder, etc.

FInished work that she does and is particularly proud of has always gone into page protectors in a binder, once it comes off the fridge or the back door.  That will stay the same. 

My son is turning 3 and while he wants to have work to do while she is working on schoolwork, he’s not yet ready for Pre-K.   I’ve got coloring and activity books he can work on if he wants to though.  When we were doing Pre-K with my daughter, he always wanted to participate in some way.  hehe.

This year will be very interesting.  My youngest daughter will begin toddling around any time now so I’ll have two toddlers underfoot, and a new baby coming in November.  Part of our schooling will again focus on birth and babies as my daughter really, really wants to be at the birth and cut the umbilical cord. She wanted to for my last birth also, but I tend to labor and birth in the wee hours of the morning and I didn’t want to wake her up.  She’s already seen the videos I use in my classes, and i wrote a homebith book for her that I’ve made available for free at Motherhood Naturally Publications.  So we’ll once again do that, and take this opportunity to go a bit more in depth on some things and help her learn anatamy and the birthing process a bit more so she can be ready to expect the noises, blood, visions, etc.

My youngest daughter celebrated her first birthday today.  I can’t believe she’s 1!!!  I also can’t believe how hard it was to find toys that #1 we didn’t already have, #2 didn’t light up/move/make a ton of noise, #3 weren’t made of plastic, #4 weren’t made in China, and #5 weren’t from a TV show.  maybe I put a lot of barriers on gifts but we dont’ watch TV so my kids dont’ know the characters anyway (and I dont’ want to pay for a name), I want to support toy makers in my own country who aren’t trying to poisen my children with lead, and I refuse to buy toys that are overly done up with lights, music, noise, movement, etc. We don’t buy batteries in bulk, so batteries are at a premium around here. LOL. 

We did find a couple of things, but I’ve decided that for the next year or two, and for our next baby, once toys are outgrown they go in the attic.  Once a bithday comes along for the younger kids, they get toys from the attic because they’ll never know the difference and pretty soon we won’t be able to find toys to buy our kids that we don’t already have anyway.  Ok, maybe that’s going a bit too far but do they really NEED new toys?  No way.  They’ll never know the difference, and if they did, chances are good they wouldn’t mind anyway. 

‘Maters are large and green… Can’t wait for them to turn red!

Newsflash: My house is clean!

I am so proud of myself I’m bouncing off the walls!

My whole house is clean!  I have been struggling badly since our move with trying to keep our larger space clean.  I’ve not yet been able to get the whole house clean on the same day, but today somehow I managed it.  The kids helped a lot with putting things away and picking up their play room.  It is SO NICE to have a freshly cleaned house, and it seems so much larger now too!  LOL. 

I have set some new rules in place today, and I hope to make them habits.  This isn’t rocket science, and it’s something I should have done long ago!

• Toys will be picked up before a new activity is started. Period.  All too often the kids will be playnig in the playroom and we decide to go outside and swim.  Well, before that happens their toys must be picked up.
• I will be doing dishes after each meal and while cooking.  If something is not contaminated with raw meat and it’s not sharp, my 4.5 year old will begin washing some dishes on her own, perhaps the ones I use as I cook, which are freshly dirtied and thus have no dried on gunk.  Honestly this is something she loves to do, and she’s a perfectionist, so she does a really good job.  I’ve tried and tried to keep up with this rule but always get interruped.  Would you pray that I can keep up this time?
• All toys will be brought up to the play room before bed, except a small basket of toys for the baby.  Not only will toys be brought up, but they’ll be put away!
• Floors will be vaccumed each evening.  All floors.  Which means all floors need to be picked up, too.
• Every dish will be cleaned before I go to bed each evening.  Counters will be clean and perhaps the only thing left out will be the dishes I washed the night before that were drying.

I’m hoping these new rules will be the start of an always guest-ready home.  For so long I have wished for our family to live in a house and get out of apartments, and for that same amount of time I’ve been hoping I could keep my house guest-ready.  I’ve struggled for so long, and people stopping over would tell me they’re surprised I’ve kept thing as clean as I have, between having such young and closely spaced children, running a business and having three dogs (we have four now… a spaniel/lab mix has joined our household) but really – I didn’t feel the house was clean and I was embarrassed.  Certainly i don’t think I could keep the house immaculate.  I do have three very young and closely spaced children.  However I think I can keep the house as clean as I have it today and that is more than enough to make me happy and want surprise guests!  I’ve gotten the hard part over, now it’s just upkeep.

My husband is visiting his brother, and I am so excited to show him the clean house he’s always wanted.  House chores have always been my thing, so I’ve felt I’ve been letting him down when the house is cluttered or messy.  I took a video clip on my digicam tonight that I’m emailing to his brother, not only so my husband can see how nice the house is, but so his brother can see our new dwelling too!