The Dryer and I

I have a love/hate relationship with my dryer.  I know I am not alone.  This relationship has been building over the years, starting back before my first baby was born.  There was no dryer in our house at the time, just a clothesline, and not much of one at that.  Knowing that I would be using cloth diapers, I thought getting a dryer was a great idea.  Our housemate and my husband were against the idea, claiming that lots of mothers before me had done plenty of laundry without a dryer!  In fact, both of their mothers had hardly ever used a dryer, Nick's mother (of twins) actually didn't even have one.  While I admired her, I didn't think I was woman enough to go without. I argued that just because she didn't have a dryer doesn't mean she liked it!

  Eventually I won out, but not until we moved to a new farm, and set up together from scratch.  We found a used dryer at a yard sale for $15!  It worked perfectly well for many years.

     I do not like to use my dryer.  But then again I love to use my dryer.  It is like a guilty pleasure.  When I am short on time and long on laundry, in they go.  When it is wet and rainy for days, in they go.  I pull the warm clothes from the dryer and hold them to my face like I did when I was little, and as I've watched my children do.  It feels so good, and it was so simple to achieve.  But it comes with a price, and that warmth I feel always has a flash of regret attached. The dryer is second in energy consumption of household appliances only to the refrigerator.  A typical clothes dryer will use 400 watts/hour.  The average family will use up 1750 kWh per year on a dryer.  At our rates of 7.47 cents per kWh, that's right around $130 annually.
     For us it is not so much the budget, as the carbon emissions, and sheer waste of it.  Of course we are fortunate enough to live where we can have a clothesline.  I have about 60' of line out side.  In the house I use the old fashioned stand up drying racks.  You may not know what I mean, as they are fairly obsolete.  They fold accordion style vertically, and have tiers of horizontal dowels to hang clothes on.  We place these over our heat vents, and can manage to fit a fair amount of laundry on these racks.  We have two large ones, and a small one that can fit a small load.  I also have a hanging rack that folds out from the wall behind our wood cookstove.  We bought this last year for about $25 from an Amish store in the area. All these devices help us utilize the hot air that is already being created in our home.  I realize that not everyone can have a clothesline.  In fact many planned communities and cities have regulations against hanging clothes or clotheslines.  I suppose these are the same type of homeowner associations that won't allow you to grow vegetables either!  The ridiculousness of this is beyond me.   Is laundry all that offensive?  I am curious about this, and perhaps this winter I will find out more, see if there may be a change on the horizon...

For now we are without a dryer.  The yard sale find crapped out on me about 4 or 5 months ago, in the thick of produce season.  I'll be the first to admit to many moments of frustration at the time it takes to go through the line drying process.  Now that things have slowed down for me, I kind of like the work.  It can be mildly meditative, and my small girls can play in the yard while I work.  As for the inside rack drying, it is just an ebb and flow that fits into my daily chores as long as I am spending the day at home.

It seems like a small step, going dryerless.  Could be we won't replace it.  Could be I'll look back, think I was crazy and take a trip to Sears.  Could just be though, that I am woman enough!


 

Guy Fawkes day

Hey guys it's Grace again posting about Guy Fawkes Day. On Saturday night we went to Maia and Orion's for Guy Fawkes Day which is an English holiday. It was super fun. Guy Fawkes was Catholic and wanted to keep it that way. He did not want the religion to change to Protestant. He planed to kill King James and the Parliament so one night he and some other guys crept out and rolled a lot of barrels of gunpowder under the building of Parliament. Some guards checked the cellar and arrested Guy. he was torchered him into giving his commrades away. His punishment was being hanged drawn and quartered.He commited suicide instead. King James told everyone in England  to have a bond fire every 5th of November in honor of Guy Fawkes. So we got to burn an effigy of Guy and have an all together fun night.

FOSSIL IN THE MAKING!

Today when we were cleaning out our old tadpole aquarium I saw something at the bottom of the tank, I looked  closer and saw this tadpole skeleton!(above)
Posted by LEON

Last Golden Days

We are trying to cram as much as we can into these last few nice weather days.  We have had cold mornings and super warm afternoons.  Yesterday the kids got each other soaking wet with the garden hose, and Iris found it appropriate to run around naked in the hottest part of the day.

Here is a brief list of things we should really do in the next 3 days, as "arctic" temps will be here by Monday, so they say.

-finish building wood shed
-wash and hang all laundry- broken dryer that we don't like to use anyway!
-take all trash and recyclables to dump, we always seem to have a pile of it!  still some lefrt from the growing season, when we become a household of 8-10 depending on the day
-put away all garden supplies, trays, tools, bins and baskets
-pick up detritus from yard and surrounding areas
-cut firewood
-harvest more carrots and beets to store

I know I am leaving many things out, like hike in the woods, play by the river, ride horses....
What am I doing in the house at my computer?!!??
Katharine

Pigs Love Greens

With the markets being done for the year, we have plenty of greens left to go around.  I have been picking a large laundry basket to give the pigs each day.  Man do they love them.  They carefully choose a single leaf, pass it back to their back teeth, chew thoroughly, and take another.  Pigs can actually eat quite delicately.  Pigs love greens, and we love pigs!

paper swirling

Hey y'all it's Grace  posting about a super cool art  project we did on Monday. Its called paper marbling and it's how they make that really cool swirly paper. First we had to get oil based paints and mix them with paint thinner and then we poured the paint in a pan with water we swirled it around and layed a piece of paper on top and.... voila a beautiful peice of paper.It was really easy but super messy! Dad just got home last night safe and sound. We are going to Sunny Side Wools today for Homeschool group! well that's all
Grace 

Solo Part 2

Grace squirting milk in to Iris's mouth

A fitful night of sleep as I worried about not having found the hole where the cows got out.  What would I wake to find? Cows in the feed hall eating all the feed?  In the upstairs of the barn mucking about in this winter's hay?  I lay in bed at 6ish thinking of what to do, how to fix the fence, get cows where they should be, appreciatin my husband.  The thought of our friend Joe, who used to live here but moved to the Eastern Shore came to me.  I thought "if Joe still lived here, I could call him., he'd help me."  And this is where life gets wierd.  At 8a.m., the phone rings, and it is Joe.  And he is here at Deep Creek Lake with friends.  He wants to come over and get firewood.  So fine with me I tell him, as long as you help me fix fence and put the cows in!

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, just Tess and I.  Quiet and peaceful, and a bit lonesome after being used to a house full!  We got the chores done without much trouble.  I went out to turn the lights off  in the barn around 10p.m., and let Libby and Puppy out for one last romp.  The romp ended up in a severe skunking! P! U!  Libby got a direct hit, and was very unhappy about not having access to the house.  A cold night, and no dogs for warmth.  The spraying must have happened close to my room, because it smelled as if the skunk sprayed my pillow.

When I layed my weary head down, Tessa woke, and I snuggled up to her and realized she was burning up.  Her fever was around 103, and we had a night deprived of sleep.  No high drama here, just the downfalls of motherhood, with a good blest of skunk to go with it.

When we got out of bed, the temp outside was 22, pretty cold for a feverish baby to do chores.  We bundled to the best of our abilities and Tessa was content to be warm and close on my back.  All was well, animals full and happy, sun shining, and I knew Grace and Leon and Iris would be home later that day.  It is good for me to do Max's chores, like that old tale of the man and woman who switch places for the day.  It is true that you come to appreciate what they do.  It is good to know I can do it, that we can maintain as a farm while the main man is away. Let's hear it for family power!

"Solo Weekend"

Max went to Seattle this weekend for 5 days.  That in itself is monumental.  He is enrolled in a Paul Stamets workshop on gourmet and medicinal mushroom cultivation.  Paul Stamets is a world renowned mycologist,  you can see what he is up to at http://www.fungiperfecti.com/.

Tess, Iris and I hauled Max to the Pittsburgh airport at 5a.m.  We were home by 1p.m., milked the cow, checked the fires, conferred w/ Grace and Leon on school, fixed lunch and got ready to take kids to Riitta's.  We met Riitta at work by 4.  The big kids went with her for the weekend.  This means that Tessa and I have the farm to ourselves.  Hmmm...

We get home close to 5.  What do I see, but 5 cows out in front of the barn. My cows.  I grab Tess, not dressed for winter and throw her on my back in the Ergo baby.  It starts snowing- hard.  The cows do not listen to me when I ask them kindly to return to their pasture.  I begin to get loud about it, and implore Libby, our "cow dog" to help me get them through the barn back to pasture. She tries, looks at me with a confused expression, and herds them the opposite way.  I panic slightly.  I end up letting all the cows out instead of getting the errant ones in.  I panic more than slightly.  Tess is a champ.  Libby is trying hard, but the bull is now pissed off at her and she is scared.  He is pissed off at me too, and I identify with Libby.  I decide Tess needs more clothes and come to the house, breathe deep, ask for help.  The phone rings an it is my neighbor and friend Kim.  She invites me to see a movie and I shriek that the cows are out, I'm all alone with a naked baby on my back in the snow.  She says she'll be right over.  So the good woman arrives and we work to get all the animals where they should be and do the barn chores.  She's so good she even brought a bottle of wine.

I think the animals know when I am alone.
Stay tuned for Solo Part 2

Am I completely insane, and will we follow through with this project?

Looking at a friend's blog finally persuaded me that yes, this is a worthy use of time for me and my family.  I've been toying with the idea of talking to the world about our life, and letting the older kids try their hand at it for a variety of reasons.  Now that i have actually picked out a template and am faced with the reality of it, I ask myself (as I often do) "Am I completely insane?"

Time will tell