We Bought a Farm: Why lawns are BAD

It's truly CRAZY to me the things that I am interested in simply because I married the man I did and moved to the place I did.

JB put on a podcast one day about the downsides of having a lawn, and I was hooked. I wanted to tell the whole world to get rid of their lawn

Mostly, I get frustrated by this fact:

People are constantly telling us about ways to save the world and the environment. But when it really boils down to it, no one wants to do something that doesn't fit the cultural "norms."

Recycling is okay. We don't have to see the mess and sorting. We give it to someone else to do.

But anything that impacts the "look" of a neighborhood or a house? 

We are out.

For example: One of the biggest energy sinks in your whole house? The dryer. But nearly all HOA's outlaw clotheslines. Why? Because it looks "shabby" to hang your clothes to dry. I have written about this fact here and here.

Another thing that gets my goat are lawns. Did you know a lawn is a European invention and it is designed to show status? Think about it. Even today when we see a house with a good lawn, we think "Good people live there."

You can read a ton more about lawns and why they are bad for the environment in so many ways by clicking here. This article links to tons more articles about lawns.

Anyways, I've written often about how I am trying to drink my "Sphere of Concern." We are trying to focus more and more on the little things we can do to help our world instead of getting frustrated by things way too big to cause change in. We have decided to mostly eliminate "the lawn" at our house. A little bit of green space is of course nice for kids to play on. But what can we do to use our space for good?

Well, JB recently did this: 

One example of our Beyond-Organic methods of farming and gardening.

We place birdhouses and allow some nearby areas to become overgrown with shrubs. 

The shrubs are blackberries and Eastern Redbuds and Nanking Cherry. These provide food and shelter for the birds who then come and eat pest insects from our garden, which is just behind me as I took this photo. 

This is just one birdhouse of many. The kids paint the birdhouses. They each know which of the houses were theirs. This one is perfect for sparrows (even the non-native House Sparrow!). We place other types of birdhouses that have housed nesting Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows.

How we move DA sheep (and more!)

I thought it might be interesting to show a close-up of one of the main chores we have on the farm. We call it "running line." Running individual paddocks for the animals allows us to rotationally graze our animals. (To understand why "newer school" farmers are choosing this method, visit this link from John's website: here.) 

When we first got the farm, JB would go out and run all this line himself. It is back-breaking work, and would leave him exhausted and us missing him. Now that the kids are a tad older, we have gotten the whole family involved. We almost always go out all six of us and do the work in a fraction of a time. We can get a new paddock set up in about 15-30 minutes with the help of the kids. 

This is something that they help with at least 3-4 times a week on the farm. They know they will not be out there long, we try to do it when it is cool, and we give random rewards for hard workers. :)

Anyways, here is a video demonstrating the technique: 

And just because I'm already posting videos, here's one that got cut off showing some of our house updates:

And since I like to do things in three's, here is a video of the puppies opening their eyes!!

Pigs, Pride, and Permaculture

JB recently wrote on an article on his website about some of the things we've learned on the farm and the changes we are making. You can read it here. I am so thankful to be on this journey with my husband. We know we have chosen the right life. We are just trying to figure out exactly what that looks like. 

We Bought a Farm: FREE Live Presentation

JB is speaking TODAY for FREE. You just have to register for the event. 

John will give an information packed presentation outlining his first year on their family’s new farm/homestead. He will give specifics on how he is developing and managing his land, animals, and plants. He will provide the good along with the bad so that you can learn from his research, trials, and errors. This will be a fast paced presentation full of useful information, so have your pen and paper ready.

We Bought a Farm: Time to start a forest garden

For those of you following the progress of our farm, I thought you might be interested in my husband's latest blog post about our up and coming forest garden! We arrived to late in the season to do this last year so the time is drawing near!

We Bought a Farm: What Healing the Land Looks Like

Results of our chicken tractor. 

This strip of green is where all the manure was deposited as we moved our chickens. 

Quite impressive!

Mushrooms!

My hubby is a mushroom ... fanatic! He has written about his love on his blog in posts like: Why I love hunting mushrooms and Wild Mushroom Identification (and a project for kids!) and Shaggy Mane Mushrooms: Wild Harvesting in the Azores and Edible Wild Mushrooms in the Azores and Reishi (Ling Chi) Mushroom and Seventy Distinctive Mushrooms (7 part series) and Questions from readers: Mushroom Patches ... Are they safe? 

(See what I mean? He REALLY loves mushrooms!)

The other day, I left to take Abigail to ballet. When I came home, JB told me that he had gone on a mushroom hunt with the boys while Hannah was napping. He took some pictures and shared some details. It was such a fantastic homeschool activity that I thought I would share them with you:

Can you see the puffballs in this photo? I spotted them from our kitchen window and took the boys out to check them out.

Here's a closer look. See them now?

There were 2 large ones. We left the one on top to release spores. The one on the bottom was very malformed. There is a real small one on the right. We harvested the big one on the left.

Here it is. Calvatia cyathiformis. The Purple-Spored Puffball Mushroom.

The boys got to pick it together!

It's almost the size of their heads!

Calvatia cyathiformis. The Purple-Spored Puffball Mushroom. When the interior is still white, the mushroom is edible. The central white portion will turn purple as the spores mature and are ready to be released.

Craving a World of Less Convenience

Did you know my husband is into ... nature?

Nature and outdoors and farming and permaculture and rural life and all that kind of stuff.

He maintains a very popular blog that you can read by clicking here. He also has a fellowship in Wilderness Medicine.

Yeah, okay, so he's also a doctor. But while he likes medicine, he absolutely loves permaculture. 

The thing is, I always knew my husband was into animals and outdoors things. He's always liked them. But it wasn't until about five years into our marriage that I realized this love of all things not inside was going to kind of effect me.

I mean he's not just loving fresh air. He's like wanting to live in it. And since I plan on living with him, I get wind of the fact that in a trickling down sorta way, I'm going to have to probably breathe the fresh air too.

And I was resistent.

At first.

I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say I'm a city girl. But I did grow up in South Florida (which is definitely not out in the country.) I have never planted anything in the ground. I have always lived close to a grocery store and a mall and a Target and modern conveniences. I've never milked a cow or anything crazy like that. 

And suddenly he's talking about living on a farm, in the country. He wants to raise most of our own food and hunt and work the land.

So I'd listen and nod and think to myself What the heck is he talking about. I mean he's reading books on mushrooms and farming zones and these books have titles like Swine Science and stuff.

I love my husband and so I attempted to at least respect this idea he had. I mean, if your spouse is passionate about something that you laugh at, it's probably going to create a little tension in your relationship. 

But then a few weeks back, we started our search for land. And as we stopped at a few farms and took a look around, I found myself falling in love.

Not with him. I'm sorta already in love with him.

But I realized I was falling in love with this idea of removing ourselves from the frantic pace of life that Americans live. I realized that our four years overseas, living a slow life void of modern conveniences, had started to open me up to this country life idea more than I realized.

A friend recently shared a blog entry she read entitled: Craving a World of Less Convenience. 

The author wrote:

"I love the idea of plain living.

How did this happen?

And how do I show others….."

In the book The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of Eustace Conway who at the age of seventeen, left his family's comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains. For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he has trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature. 

Gilbert writes:

Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in a box of their bedrooms because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into another box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken into little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to the house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothing in a box, they live their lives in a box. Break out of the box! This not the way humanity lived for thousands of years.

Clever, ambitious, and always in search of greater efficiency, we Americans have, in two short centuries, created a world of push button, round the clock comfort for ourselves. The basic needs of humanity – food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, transportation, and even sexual pleasure – no longer need to be personally laboured for or ritualised or even understood. All these things are available to us now for mere cash. Or credit. Which means that nobody needs to know how to do anything any more, except the one narrow skill that will earn enough money to pay for the conveniences and services of modern living.

But in replacing every challenge with a short cut we seem to have lost something and Eustace isn’t the only person feeling that loss. We are an increasingly depressed and anxious people – and not for nothing. Arguably, all these modern conveniences have been adopted to save us time. But time for what? Having created a system that tends to our every need without causing us undue exertion or labour, we can now fill those hours with…? 

I have come to realize during our return to America that I am no longer craving convenience. Instead, I am, in fact, craving less convenience.

For four years I lived without choices.

And you know, it was kind of nice not having so many choices.

"I used to dream about the perfect house and perfect clothes. Now I find myself dreaming about fresh air and blackberry bushes. Baby chickens and maple trees. Hanging laundry and a good pair of overalls. And maybe building a cabin one day."

Five years ago I would have read those words and appreciated them but not echoed them. But somehow, this man I fell in love with way back in 1996 has rubbed off on me. As we viewed various farm properties a few weeks back, I actually said out loud, "Don't you think those neighbors are a bit too close?" And I literally slapped my hand over my mouth when I said, "But you can see a road. I don't think we want to live that close to the road do we?"

I think it took everything within JB not to raise his hands up to the sky and thank the Almighty Lord for  causing his wife to see the light. 

In Craving a World of Less Convenience Ashley Hackshaw writes about returning to the farmhouse that her grandfather had told all of his stories about.

"When we arrived at the farmhouse I think what hit us most was the remoteness of it.

What on earth did they do out here?
Where did they buy things?
Who did they talk to?

And the answer was so simple:

They worked all day.
They rarely bought things.
They talked to each other.
They shared with neighbors.
They went to church.
They were pretty darn self sufficient.
This was the American Dream.
And they were happy."

JB and Permaculture

I am so proud of my hubby.

He flew from the island to Baltimore last week. From there, he caught a flight to Tennessee. He is now in California. He left Tennessee with a job! He will be working in an ER in a small town in the Volunteer State. He'll work 10-12 twelve hour shifts a month to support our family.

And while he does his medicine with his whole heart and does it well, his whole heart is actually somewhere else.

(Besides his family of course.)

John is PASSIONATE and, well, basically OBSESSED with Permaculture.

So what is Permaculture?

John actually maintains a very popular blog on just this topic. You can check it out by clicking here. He defines Permaculture as: "The basic idea, and it is indeed basic, is to create a system of agriculture that is self sufficient, requires little to no work (by humans) to maintain, improves the land, and produces a product (food, wood, fiber, animals) that humans can use.  When I first heard of this concept, I pictured a Garden of Eden.  I thought it was a bit too ambitious.  Raising food = work, and hard work at that.  But the more I read and learned, I realized that this ideal was very attainable."

Aside from his Blog, John and three other leaders in this community have just launched a website called Agritrue. "The mission of AgriTrue is simple. We want to know where our food comes from and how it was raised. We want truth and transparency in the process and production of the food we eat. We want to connect food producers and food consumers. To do this, we need to rebuild a community where growers, farmers, and ranchers are talking directly with their patrons. AgriTrue wants to help start this conversation."

JB is truly becoming one of the LEADERS of this community of people. Our plan is to rent a place in Tennessee for a year or so. During this time, we will be carefully looking to find the perfect patch of land to launch our own Permaculture farm. This will be a place for our family, but we also hope it will one day be an educational center where missionaries and other people can come to learn about how to make this practice work for them. We are very open to discover how God plans to use us and permaculture and this land we will soon own.

Proof of JB getting his "niche" in this field? Well, here is a podcast recording of a talk he did with Scott Mann of The Permaculture Podcast.

A few months before that talk, he spoke with Permaculture Voices on The Myth of The Perfect Job. You can listen to that talk by clicking here.

And actually, while I write this, my husband is speaking at this huge conference in California called The Permaculture Voices. He is speaking on health and permaculture. You can read his speaker's bio here.

Here he is at the Permaculture Voices Conference with Greg Judy (brilliant grassfed beef farmer/rancher), Jack Spirko (podcaster/Permaculturist and John's partner with AgriTrue) and Byron Joel (Mediterranean Permaculture expert from Perth, Australia)

 

I remember when my cousin Josh, our neighbor for two years when we lived in Franklin, Kentucky once told me that "I knew I had been hanging around John too long when I came into his house, saw a book entitled Swine Science and actually thought I might want to pick it up and read it.

 

If you glance at his Facebook page, you'll see messages like this from people he both knows and doesn't know that well:

Our compost is steaming!! Just thought you might be interested to know... and Thought you might be interested in this link John: Hand-Build an Earth sheltered House For $5,000. 
Our friend Josh put the picture below on JB's page last week:

When this is your Sunday afternoon... You know you've been around John Kitsteiner

 

Sometimes I think my husband doesn't believe I am very interested in Permaculture. That is, party true. I still don't quite understand it all, and quite honestly, my passion right now is my children simply because there are four of them and they demand more of my time. But, I am so proud of my husband. I love that he has something he is so incredibly passionate about and something he wants to spend the rest of his life doing. He is so incredibly excited to homeschool our boys and raise them on a farm and teach them this new way of life. And I look forward to doing this with him and learning as I go.

 

Gramas Galore

March is going to be one crazy and fun month in these parts!

• Firstly, Joni comes into town. (Bri's mom).
• Then, Grama Di comes into town. (My mom).
• During Grama Di's stay, JB has to go back to the USA for a wide assortment of activities (house hunting, interviews, speaking at a Permaculture Conference, and taking a Trauma course).
• While JB is still gone, JB's parents will return from America and will stay for the duration of our time here.

And once JB gets back, life will start flying. We should be packing out (hopefully) sometime in April. It could be May, but I am really praying it is April. You see, the earlier we can pack-out on this end, the faster our stuff can be on its way to America. On this end, I know lots of people to borrow stuff from. And, we get loaner furniture from the Base. In addition, the house we live in is already half furnished.

But in America, we will have NOTHING until our stuff arrives. I take that back, we will have the few items that we put in storage before we left for Turkey. But not so sure how much our China and some old books will give us a soft place to lay our heads!

We are due to leave the Azores sometime in early June. We plan to rent a home in Tennessee for a year or so while we look for the land and permanent home we want to buy.

It's hard to believe that I will be within driving distance of so many people I love. Two friends are moving to Montgomery which is under four hours away. Our cousins Josh and Sarah are in the Nashville area, and I still have many connections in Bowling Green, Kentucky like our friends the Wilsons and my good friend Shea. I look forward to catching up with a lot of old Kentucky friends when we return.

JB is going to be interviewing for some jobs when we goes back to the USA in March, but we are pretty sure he is going to be working in an ER. This affords him the opportunity to work 12 or 24 hour shifts (depending on which job he takes). It allows him to show up for work, get the job done, and come home and spend time working on our land and being with our family. Eventually, he will probably drop to part-time, but for awhile, he'll be doing this full-time which is 1 or 2 twelve-hour shifts a week (10 a month.)

JB is also planning a HUGE trip to Australia in January of 2015, and the jobs he is interviewing with know this about his future. He is going to be doing a Permaculture Internship with the leader in the field. He is incredibly excited about this. He'll be gone for ten weeks! We would love to join him, but unfortunately, at $2,000 a ticket and me flying with four tiny tikes and then being holed up in a B&B while there, I've opted to spend some time in South Florida and visiting friends around the USA during this time instead.

Lots of change coming to our life. We are looking forward to finally settling down in one place after years of years of moving every 2 to 4 years. 

Time for some new adventures!

Bookworm

Abigail put on a pair of sunglasses which had had their lenses pushed out. She looked a little bookwormish so JB handed her his favorite permaculture textbook. And the result? Well ... see for yourself.

A bookworm would make her Daddy mighty proud!

Potatoes

"Hey guys -- hold up a purple potato to show the camera what you guys helped pick in the garden tonight."

No one listening.

Abigail trying to listen but getting confused.

Two kids listening.

Three kids listening but one dropping her potato.

Pretty close.

No smiles, but not bad.

Might be the closest we'll get.

Gardening with dad

I'm not sure I enjoy anything more than seeing my kids with their Dad. Isaac enjoys his time with Daddy on the rocks by the beach. He loves to climb. Sidge, however, really enjoys being in the garden with John. They both have different interests, and JB finds a way to get outside with each of them. Abigail will go anywhere if she gets to sit on Daddy's hip.

Here are some pictures of the new plant beds JB just finished. You can also see the compost bins in the background of picture #3.

And here are some other posts from JB's blog featuring his adventures with his children outside. I love when he writes about his kids and nature coupled together. We are so lucky to be raising our children in such a beautiful place with so much outside at our fingertips.

Picking and Eating Tomatoes with my Daughter

Let your Kids DO Something in the Garden

Tidepooling with my Son

Adventure with my boys

Boys meet Grasshoppers

Turkish Animals

What is growing in your kitchen?

I realized, when Aunt Connie arrived, how little I know about what is present in my own kitchen. For example, Connie asked me what the item pictured below was. 

 

My answer was an easy one. "I have no earthly idea."

In order to discover what the unknown item is, I have to ask my husband. He will gladly tell me what the unfamiliar item is. But I'm busy. I forget. In one ear and out the other.

But my husband has a blog. And that blog will give descriptions of what is growing on my counter. So now all I have to do is scroll down on the blog and look for a picture of what is on my counter, and then I will get a description of what the item is.

An example. Item above? Milk Kefir.

I love my husband. I love how unique he is. I love how his interests are so varried and different. I love bantering with him about the fact that there is so much fermentation everywhere  in our house. I love that when he is making things just for himself, they will come out looking like this:

 

I don't love that there are so many jars of this floating around the house. Only because (a) they have nothing to do with chocolate and (b) because they take up so much room.

 

But they make him happy, and so I to nag about them as little as possible:

 

And this, on the counter. I'd never look at Sour Kraut and use the words: "Isn't it beautiful?" but that's exactly what JB said when the finished product was complete.

And JB makes a good point. Since I don't cook, how can I complain about what is in my kitchen. I don't think it actually qualifies as my kitchen. And since I have no desire to cook, I think I'll work on complaining less.

Under Construction

Grampa cannot sit around. It's not in his make-up. He needs to be doing. And goodness knows, we had a list a mile long of things he could be doing while he was here visiting. He's done tons of little things (super gluing and repairing small things) but the two big projects he underook included building a compost bin (click here to read about compost bins on JB's website) and then working on a clubhouse for the boys. Here are some photos of the clubhouse under contstruction:

 

Grampa built it in the garage so as to not be sidelined by rain. And today .... he and JB used the van to "tow" it into place. Stay tuned as I plan to post pictures of it very soon! What's so amazing about it is that it was done for nearly free -- with scrap pieces of wood used for crates on Base. Anchors away!

Together Activities

Sunday was Father's Day. Since we didn't have a vehicle, and we are all just exhausted and finding our groove, I decided that the best thing I could "muster" for JB was a day where he could do whatever he liked, with or without me and the kids (his choice), but not have to be "in charge." In other words, I'd change the diapers and make the food and monitor naps, unless he wanted to step in. In other words, he'd get to enjoy the kids without having to take care of the kids.

He could choose the activities and schedule for the day too. So he chose (a) individual time with each boy (b) some time to blog (c) dinner out and then (d) watching Portugal soccer (aka futbol) at home after the kids went to bed.

So that's exactly what he did.

The boys chose what activity they wanted to participate in. Technically, they were given the option to attend both, but it just worked out that they each chose something different. Elijah wanted to go to the rocks by our house and peruse the tide pools. Isaac wanted to go shopping with JB. So that's what they did.

JB just did another fantastic post on tidepooling with Elijah that those of you who are intimately connected with our family would probably really enjoy reading. (It's written on my intellectual level, unlike many of his posts that are way beyond me so don't panic before you give it a chance.)

My husband is in heaven here in the Azores. I didn't realize how much Turkey was cutting off his ability to "get in nature" until we came here. Every day, his favorite thing to do is go and look for sea creatures. He is anxiously awaiting the arrival of our household goods and his snorkeling equipment so that he can get in the water.

After his morning at the beach, he and Isaac went out looking for household items (like light bulbs) and when they came home, JB was grinning from ear to ear. JB has always wanted to raise bees, but he always thought it would have to wait until we got back to the States. But he had found a place that he can buy the bee equipment (which I sort of understand what that is only because I read The Secret Life of Bees a few months ago.) He anxiously started researching and is now just waiting to see whether or not he can get bees here as you can't have them shipped from the USA. When he expressed his excitement about the possibility of raising bees here, I said to him, "Why in the world would you want to raise bees JB?"

To which his reply was, "Why in the world would I not want to raise bees?"

Sometimes it is utterly beyond me how he and I get along so well. We are such different people! But I love him so much, even if he wants to raise an animal that stings you.

After that, we walked along the beautiful walking path that lines the water by our house. This walking path is popular with locals from other towns too. People drive to our town just to walk this path since most towns don't have sidewalks. It's perfect for me and the boys as they can ride their little three-wheelers safely. There are some also steep hills and ramps, which they love to zoom down (even though they have to get off their bikes to push them back up the hills.)

Following our walk, we went to the only restaurant in our town -- Buzios -- which just happens to be right around the corner. It is fantastic. They specialize in pasta and seafood, and are perfect for us having three little kids because they serve sausage pieces ("hot dogs") and a bread appetizer that keeps the kids happy in the beginning, and then they have ice cream cones for dessert (which allows us to enjoy the last few bites of our meals in peace.) JB asked the chef to "surprise him" with his best seafood dish, and he got a sampling of all the current specialties. He was in heaven.

The evening concluded with us watching Portugal win 2 to 1! What a wonderful day -- even for me having to be "in charge" on the weekend. Just great to spend quality time with my four favortist people.

Humanure

"So are you excited about buying some land and finally settling down?" My husband asked me as we sat at the park watching our boys chase each other down the slides.

I told him,"Yes!" enthusiastically. I'm so tired of moving. Ready to have our own house. Ready to pick where we want to live. Ready to live there forever. Or for a very long time.

As I have mentioned previously, my husband's passion is not medicine. His passion is permaculture. He wants to buy some land on the Eastern side of the United States (Virginia? North Carolina?) and farm. He'll practice medicine. But only enough to afford our home and land. He wants to have as much time as he can to work our land.

"How do you feel about our plan?" he asked me.

The plan to buy the land? Great. The plan to build our house? Fine. I'm really easy. My only request was that we lived within 30 minutes of a Target. Not too out in the boonies. If he wants me to help him farm, I can do that. I'm not a needy woman. All I truly need is for my family to be together and have time together. And to be within 30 minutes of a decent sized city and a Target (or an equivalent that does not start with W and end with mart.)

But JB was getting at something. And I couldn't figure out what. He was asking me too many questions. Skirting around. I couldn't put my finger on it. So I played along.

"You okay with a well?" he asked.
"I am."
"You okay with solar panels?"
"Sure."
"You okay with the hay bale home idea?"
"Sounds fine."
"And a composting toilet? How 'bout that?"

Aaahhhh ... there it is. There's what he was working his way toward. Human composting. Am I okay with that.

I am not a high maintenance woman. But I must draw the line.

No ... I ... am ... not.

But JB was not through with me. As he artistically tried to describe for me the wasting of resources that a septic system and toilet requires, he mentioned something about sawdust, and I glossed over.

My answer was not one I had to think about. The words spilled from the depths of my soul.

"I'm sorry JB. I can get on board with nearly anything. But I cannot get on board with a toilet that does not flush. What will our friends think when they come in our house and need to use the bathroom, and I have to show them how to throw sawdust in the toilet? You aren't going to bring me to your side on that one. Not ever."

His response?

"All right. I'll research more and figure out a way to bring you to my side," he said.

And thus ended the discussion.

Eighteen years together, and I knew better than to convince him he would not. One because he wouldn't believe me. And another because I didn't really believe myself.

My husband has a blog. On permaculture. On resources. Raising food. Preserving rainwater. Waste not. That sort of thing. I don't read his blog frequently. The concepts are too complex. Way beyond me. Confusing. Uninteresting (to me.) But he has a huge following. People are very into what he is doing. I support him. But I don't really care to read about it. Not regularly at least.

Today, I noticed he had left the browser open. So I decided to read the post he had written. No doubt my always-thinking husband did not leave this post open on our computer accidentally. He left it open so as to begin my transformation.

I have no doubt that somewhere down the line he will bring me over to his side. He always does. But I plan to drag my feet for as long as possible. There are very few things he has not eventually won me over on. Eating asparagus is the only one that quickly comes to mind. (I have decided that since I am a grownup I am going to not waver on my loathing of that food.) Anyways, I imagine he will convince me on this as well.

Want to read for yourself? Here his post on poop. Human poop. And the ability to use it for compost: Humanure.

Sigh ... stay tuned.

Little Announcements

I have a lot of little announcements that just need to be made! None are big enough to constitute their own blog, but they are important just the same. It's 2am Turkey Time right now. I can't sleep. So here I am pouring out my announcements. So you better read them!

1. Because of Isaac is doing wonderfully at just over $10,000 but the last two weeks has brought a slow down in donations again. I am truly counting on people who read my blog to (a) donate and/or (b) spread the word (we have a PDF on the website that you can use to help share about this cause.) Our goal is to raise $25,000 so we are nearing the halfway mark. Please help me get the word out about our Organization. Our sponsored couple, Grant & Elizabeth have just moved to South Carolina so they will be starting the adoption process there very shortly! We are excited that it appears we have raised enough money for them to get the process started -- even if it isn't all there yet.
2. I still have a few pashminas for sale. They are $30 and a percentage of all donations goes to support Because of Isaac.
3. I've only had six entries in my recent Book-give-away. Click here to find out what book I am giving away and to add your comment and join in the fun.
4. Are you a blog follower? Please join my "followers" on the side of the blog. I now have 200 in sight and would love to hit that number.
5. My hubby JB has started a blog. I must be honest, many of you will not find it something you are interested in. However, I have a feeling that this blog is going to become a big hit with its intended audience. If I talk about JB long enough, the word permaculture will slide into conversation without effort. It's his passion. You can click here to read a post he wrote on why he is interested in permaculture. (It also defines it, which is helpful to me, even after knowing what it is, because I often can't make it succinct enough to explain it to other people.)
6. If you are facing the giant of infertility, I encourage you to start following this blog: HELD. It was started by some ladies at Hannah's Prayer, and I hope to be involved with it through my writing in the future. It's a fantastic resource for individuals struggling with this painful journey.