Just rambling again...

I decided it's time to upload from my brain.  Here's some stuff in there in no particular order.

• I'm already thinking about next year's vegetable garden.  It's exciting and also overwhelming and scary to me.  This year I didn't get started pretty much until April, and I really could have started some cool-season crops earlier.  Next year I want to get started earlier, and I want to do a lot more.  One thing I am kind of thinking about is tearing out a lot of the front lawn to put in food.  I'm thinking summer squash, winter squash, potatoes, garlic, onions and pole beans for next year...  I just have this fear of failing and having a bunch of bare dirt instead of the pretty front lawn that we currently have.  Fear of failure doesn't usually stop me, fortunately.  It just makes me nervous. ;)  In the long run, I'm kind of considering digging out the whole front lawn and just having garden beds (maybe raised beds...) with hazelnut shell paths.  A few houses in our neighborhood have that, and I always admire it.  We can do a bit more with our back and side yards, too, but there is a lot more shade in that area, so I'm thinking that our front yard might actually be where I focus a lot of my energy as we try to grow and preserve more of our food.  We are also hoping to get grapes going on the back patio, and we want to put some dwarf fruit trees in pots on the driveway, too...  We might be finished making our food forest before we die.  Maybe.
• Today at Goodwill I finally found a stainless steel pot that is big enough to hold enough peaches/pears/tomatoes/etc to fill the seven quart jars that go into my canner.  Last year the stove space was super tight because I had to use a smaller pot along with a large pan to hold all of the to-be-canned food.  Add the giant canner and the little pot for sterilizing the lids... It was silly.  I'm hoping to pick peaches next weekend for canning.  Tomatoes should follow soon after.
• I want to make a food dehydrator before next summer.  It makes a lot of sense to me to use the sun's energy to preserve food during the summer.   Plus, you can pack more food in less space.
• Summer term is finishing up this week.  I actually have really great students this term, but I am super ready for a break.  I need to get ready for next term (which I hopefully can do in a week or so?), and then I should have about four weeks with no teaching responsibilities.  Woo hoo!
• I just read a book about using bikes as transportation, and I have renewed my enthusiasm for being a bike activist.  By that I mean that I'm going to continue biking more and more.  Eventually, I'd kind of like to use my bike to go anywhere within 10 miles.  Even more eventually, I think it'd be cool to not own a car.  It's a goal of mine.
• It's also a goal of mine to a) make close friends in my area that I can hang out with regularly and b) start a food co-op in Hillsboro.  One of those should happen sooner than the other.
• I am really concerned about our world's future.  I kind of doubt that we'll cause our own extinction in the near future, but I can see us decimating our own population through our own haste and greed.  You are welcome to think I'm silly and pessimistic, but people have done it before.  If we can't even give up a little meat and use our cars a little less to help things out...  It feels like science is going to have to grow in leaps and bounds or bad things are likely.  Sorry, Midwest farmers.  Perhaps the population can demand a less water intensive crop from you next year?
• I love being part of a CSA.  I love getting food given to me every week and planning my meals around the vegetables we get.  It can be a challenge especially since that just not how we usually do things in our society, but it's fun, healthy, and we're eating a lot of veggies.
• I have learned even more about money and budgeting since we entered the workforce and even more since we bought a house.  I can see how people easily go into debt.  It's a challenge to figure out how much money should go to different places.  We finally figured out that, outside of our usual monthly spending, we needed to see how much money was leftover so that we could split it between a few categories: Putting extra money into the mortgage, retirement savings, saving for our next car (booooo... but our '95 Camry won't last forever and right now it's hard to imagine being without a car since there's no car-share available in Hillsboro and Matthew occasionally needs a car for his work... booooo), saving for house repairs/appliance replacements/etc, and then just a bit of savings for other things that may come up that we can't even anticipate.  We figured it all out, and we made a spreadsheet so that we know how much money we have designated to different things.  It's really helpful.  We'll have to re-budget when I quit my teaching job to start my parenting job, but for now it's really nice to be intentionally putting away some money in these categories.  I still spend time wrestling with how our resources are spent and wondering if we could do things better.  I always hope that we are doing the right thing, being responsible, and helping others enough.

Thanks for reading the ramblings.  As a reward, here's a picture of a pretty water lily from our pond:

CSA Weeks 8 and 9: Green beans!

 Week 8's share included around 12 pounds of:

• Blueberries
• Carrots (the Peeposaurs love the carrot tops!)
• Lettuce
• Cabbage
• Zucchini
• Mint
• Beets
• Green beans
• Cucumbers

Meanwhile, in Week 9's share, we have received 10.3 pounds of:

• Cucumbers
• Potatoes
• Lettuce
• Beets
• Zucchini
• Green beans
• Basil
• Eggplant

That's a lot of cucumber!  I'll have to find something to make with all these!

The garden at the end of July

It's fun to look back a month ago to see how big all these plants have gotten in the past month!  This month the peas have been winding down, although still producing.  Additionally, we've had plenty of lettuce, some green beans, a head of broccoli, and plenty of zucchini.  The carrots will probably be fully mature soon (we've eaten a couple just to "check on them"), and the tomato plants have a bunch of green fruit on them.  Additionally, the winter squash plants are getting bigger, and we have a few volunteer pumpkins already growing.

Also, PEEPOSAURS!

You  can't help but love the fluffy chicken butts.

These plants needed water.  They have since received some.

Spot the tomatoes!

A few winter squash getting watered.

The sunflowers are getting big!  Next year I will hopefully get more herbs growing
in this area.  The perennial lavender, rosemary, and sage are a good start, though.
I'm thinking I'll try to get some chard, spinach, and kale growing here this fall.
I almost might have a few broccoli and cauliflower transplants to fill in some space...

CSA Weeks 6 and 7: Beans, Peas, and More Beans

Week 6 brought about 11 pounds of:

• Beets
• Lettuce
• Broccoli
• Blueberries
• Dried beans
• Peas
• Parsley
• Zucchini

Week 7 brings 8.4 pounds of:

• Blueberries
• Squash
• Lettuce
• Cucumbers
• Chives
• Purple potatoes
• Peas
• Green beans
• Fava beans

On my mind...

It has been awhile since I've just kind of rambled on about the things that rattle around in my head regarding the life I'm living.  I think the time has come to put pen to paper (fingers to keys?) and get some of it out of my head.

One idea that has stuck with me for awhile is the dream of opening a food co-op in downtown Hillsboro.  The nearest food co-op is in Portland, and even the nearest "natural foods store" is 3.5 miles away in the Orenco area.  If you haven't noticed, I'm very passionate about food, and I think it would be very exciting to use this passion to help start a co-op.  I don't really know how to start such a thing, but I'm hoping and dreaming that I can find others who can help.  Today in church the theme was "faith", and he challenged us to do something that we'd only dreamed about, so I emailed a co-op in Portland asking if they knew of any interest in starting a co-op in my area.  It doesn't hurt to ask!  I just find it exciting to think about, and it combines so many of the passions that I have felt stirred in me the last few years including food, healthy people, our planet, and close-knit communities.

Also, teaching.  I go through great emotional oscillations regarding my job teaching math.  I imagine that my experiences teaching resemble many others'.  I have students who do great, students who do fine, and students who don't do fine at all.  I occasionally have a really good teaching moment.  Last term I congratulated the student who earned the highest grade in the class because I knew that she had worked really hard and earned it.  She emailed back letting me know that she thought that I was a great teacher and that helped her earn the A in math that she was very proud of.  It's more or less the kind of moment teachers all long for.  My Type-A personality creates many dark teaching moments as well, though.  I always am left wondering "what I'm doing wrong" for those that fail.  In reality, it's probably nothing.  There are a multitude of factors that go into a student failing, and I know that I'm a sufficient enough instructor that it is probably not me causing the failure.  However, it still kind of hurts to see frustration and sadness as students fail, and it's very hard for me to not to emotionally shoulder some of the responsibility.  This wears at me when I think about it too much.

Part of what I have realized is that I am very frustrated that College Algebra is required for all Bachelor's degrees.  It truly is a Pre-Calculus course, or, at the very least, a course for someone who needs to have a fairly deep understanding of functions.  It is challenging and abstract, and I think many find it boring and useless.  While I personally have a deep appreciation for how math helps people think (problem solving, logic, etc), I just think we can do a lot better than College Algebra for helping college students to gain that skills we want them to gain.  I'm personally leaning toward some sort of reform where students instead take a  math class (or classes)  that aims instead solely at problem solving (perhaps using primarily the skills from pre-college math classes) and logic.  There are many math applications that would be useful to many students, and it would be really good for a lot more citizens to understand logic better.

Teaching also reminds me how frustrating some systems are in our country.  To provide for a family without assistance (especially if you want one spouse/partner to be a caretaker of any children), I think you essentially need to have a job that pays more than minimum wage.  The best way that I personally know how to do that is to get some sort of a degree, and this is what we recommend to high school students as well.  However, college is expensive, so students who need it get usually get some aid.  The aid is often only covers tuition/fees/direct college expenses, so students have to work to continue to do things like pay rent and eat.  Scholarships also often require you to take a certain number of credit hours to receive funding, so students then work full-time and take more credits than they can actually handle with the hope that they don't lose their funding.  Yes, students are responsible for themselves when they are in college, but some students really seem to have the odds stacked against them.  Perhaps this is part of the "weeding out" process of college, but it makes me upset because these people deserve to have a chance to provide for their families.  I think that the change actually needs to happen outside of the college system (that is, I think that more jobs should provide enough money for a family); however, what I see at this level fuels my frustrations.

Anyway.  That's teaching.  I guess I view it more as part of who I am and less as simply a job I'm paid to do.  Perhaps that's why it's such a challenge!

CSA Weeks 4 and 5: Plus chickens!

 Week 4 brought about 8.6 pounds of:

• Lettuce
• Kohlrabi
• Black beans
• Strawberries
• Brocolli
• Onions
• Zucchini
• Snow peas
• Plus lavender and sage starts!

 Week 5 brought 11.6 pounds of:

• Lettuce
• Beets
• Popcorn
• Snap peas
• Cabbage
• Summer squash
• Blueberries

Also, here's a picture of chickens taking a bath!  You can see the dirt flying!

Bathroom Before and After

Before

After

I really am not trying to have a home that people admire for its interior decoration.  My main considerations for what we do inside our home are: 

• Does it use resources (monetary and physical) wisely?  
• Does it bring simplicity and calm, or does it add clutter and stress?

That being said, it looks like it's time to sell the metal shelving that has served us well in the last three apartments.  In this bathroom, it just makes it unnecessarily sloppy and crowded.  We installed a white shelf that we had on hand because we used it in a couple of apartments, and we hung up some hooks (found in one of the bedroom closets!) for our towels.  Much tidier and no new resources used!