Interlude: Vacations - preparation

Just as a garden is a big solution to the inevitable and expensive need for food, camping is a great solution to the need to take a vacation.

John and I had both had favorable camping experiences at Girl Scout or YMCA camp as kids, so the thought of camping trips hit us very well. Even before we were married we were planning where we would go. Someday. When we had a car. And gas money. And camping equipment. And kids to share it all with.

The first opportunity to put the concept into practice happened when he was nearing the end of his student days. His dissertation would be done soon, and he could reasonably expect good employment. So we went shopping.

We bought: an 11x11 blue canvas tent; a Coleman camp stove; 2 sleeping bags that could be zipped together; 2 air mattresses; a Coleman lantern; a Rubbermaid wash tub; a clothesline and pins.

It came to about $90 at a time when John was earning a stipend of $250 a month. We had a long-term view of the use of all of it, though, and it seemed a worthwhile purchase.

We went to Mt Palomar, a couple of hours from our home in La Jolla CA, and tested everything out. At that time we had baby VJ, who was a little over a year old. It was a bit warm at Palomar, but otherwise it was a great way to check out that we knew how to put up the tent, take it down again (causing us to add a whisk broom before our next trip), start the stove, and use the lantern. At the end of the weekend, we were all set to go on a real trip.

Vacation!

When the first hints of uncomfortable heat came every Spring, we began to think of vacation.

Vacations had been an important part of every Summer. We'd always headed North to get out of the heat...

The Spring of 1977, our first one the farm, was no different. 

But then we looked at each other. 

There was no money.

Gas prices were at an all-time high.

There was no time.

There was no one who could take care of the goats and the garden.

There would be no vacation. Not as long as we ran a farm.

Muscles...

Before we moved to the farm, I had been leading a sedentary life for nearly a year. 

And there was no building up the muscles period with the farm. One day we didn't own it, the next day we did. One day we had no goats to move from place to place, no goats to milk, no barn to build, no garden to cultivate and plant, no hay to move...

We did all these things. John did the big heavy stuff, but I was determined to do my share (despite morning sickness that was worse at night than the morning). 

I learned that 40 lb bales of hay can be picked up and thrown up into a pickup IF you wear gloves so the wires don't eat into your hands. Forty pounds was less than the weight of my youngest child. Shouldn't be a probem!  (Though truth be known I had never thrown him...)

And I managed stubborn 150 pound goats, though they did stand on their own four feet. But even the kids - children - could do that.

What I needed to be able to work up to was to carry the 100 lb sacks of dairy feed from the garage to the barn, a distance of about 200, maybe 250 feet.

After we had been at the farm about 6 active months, I gave it a try.

I figured I would need to get it over my center of gravity, so I hoisted it to my shoulder. The grain toward the front slumped down, and so did the grain toward the back, and altogether the bag took on the shape of shoulder with only a little adjusting.

And I walked with it to the barn, and managed to slide it into the grain barrel, open up the top, and begin the day's milking.

I was very proud.

Feeling the heat and humidity...

On the first warm day, the morning was just delightful. And then the afternoon seemed a little too warm. 

I was really annoyed with myself. I had been cold for months, and now that the sun was shining I was complaining of the heat? It was only 80 degrees!

I was weeding the garden. My back was turned to the sun. In short order I was drenched with sweat.

After an hour of misery I realized it wasn't the heat, it was the combination of 80 degrees with about 80% humidity. 

The goats had moved into the shade, and Dusty was lying on the porch. I took a hint.

The problem with quitting weeding at that point was that the weeds were loving the heat and humidity as much as the rest of the garden. They were neck and neck. Head to head. Indistinguishable! And I wasn't going to the rescue.

I was actually quite disappointed in myself. As a kid I had turned red-faced at the slightest increase in temperature, when other kids were playing happily along. So maybe I had less tolerance for it. 

But such fussiness did not fit into my vision of self-sufficiency. I couldn't picture the farmers of old whining because they were hot, or stopping the planting and hoeing and the hope of their families making it through the next winter because the humidity was uncomfortable.

But no matter what my attitude about it, no matter how many little chats I had with myself about enduring and suffering through for the greater good, I still got heat cramps if I was out in the sun for too long.

Not that the indoors was much better. We had no air-conditioning, and so often these warm and humid days were accompanied by little breeze.

And on top of this dysfunction in the heat, my disappointment with my ability to perform, I realized there was no solution. Either we lived the dream and suffered through bitter winters (which never overthrew my ability to function) and hot humid summers, or we gave it up.

It probably didn't help that whatever winds there were were from the south-southwest, straight up from New York City. You could taste the foulness of the air, and maybe some of the wooziness was due to the pollution.

Whatever the case, my inability to function in even late-spring heat was threatening to our whole homestead concept.

Feeling the heat

In late April we had a balmy day, 80 degrees, and only a few days after we were still feeling the chill of a typical Spring.

The skies were mostly clear, and the bright sunshine was welcomed by us and the plants in the garden. Dusty and Kiki and the kittens lay out in it, and the goat moms took naps in it, while the babies bounced along on all the high points of their flat little corral and rejoiced in it.

It was goooooooood!

Interlude: M Obama plants a garden...

Michelle Obama says she is doing this so that children will learn about eating better.

I hope another message develops as her garden begins to grow, though: growing our own solves lots of problems (overweight, high costs of foods, hidden additives, and many more). And eating local is ultimately going to be the only way to eat.

Here's the article: Michelle Obama Plants A Garden

The Oatmeal Wars

Oatmeal is a great wholesome inexpensive food, and we had it often. We also had other hot cereals, but mostly oatmeal.

We all liked oatmeal, and I liked the idea that it would last till lunch  in small tummies.

As I sat up in my bed each morning with morning sickness, and supervised the getting-ready-for school of various of the three children, John supervised the milking and other outdoor chores and made the oatmeal for breakfast.

John grew up in New Jersey where there was an abundance of fruit, and loved to add fresh berries from our blackberry bushes, where they could be found in abundance in the late summer. His morning routine included covering his oatmeal with them before he flooded his bowl with goat milk from the fridge.

But in the Spring there were no berries. Instead, he dug into our supply of dried apricots to add flavor to his oatmeal.

And to get them soft, he cooked them right in the pot with the oatmeal flakes and water. 

The three grade-schoolers did not like their oatmeal with soft dried apricots in it!

So they didn't eat it.

Each morning I'd come down after John and the offspring had left in their different directions, and I would find one empty bowl and three bowls filled with fruity oatmeal.

They weren't eating any breakfast at all.

So various ones of us suggested to Dear Old Dad that he not put the apricots in.

And he said, "But it's better that way!" And kept putting them in.

And each morning the children said they wouldn't eat it because of the apricots.

And that was a war that lasted for a very very long time. Until berry season. Each year.