A thinking delima

We have been working outside a lot lately. Dealing with the issue of winterizing the homestead. Most of it is things we put off during the summer, things that must be done now, before the cold settles in. You tend to do these things automatically. your mind begins to wonder, and you get stuck thinking about things, that maybe you shouldn't be thinking about. Lately, however, I have been thinking about the Presidential Primaries. I know I shouldn't be, I can't even vote in them because I am an Independent. But those of you that get to, will cause me to decide between the two candidates, and I can only hope that one is the one we need. I realize that I could claim I am something that I am not so that I can vote in the primaries, but I can't. I am conservative in some issues, and liberal in others. I can only hope for a third party candidate, maybe a libertarian?

I have watched the debates, I have watched the interviews, even my NONAIS yahoo group sends things around about them. And I find myself so disappointed, and sometimes even uncomfortable with the people that are running. Most of them no nothing about agriculture. And from the responses that we have received about NAIS, all but one, on both sides of the party lines, are proNAIS, even if they don't seem to understand it, or our fears. The one that isn't for it, is for other things that I am against. What am I willing to give up? Nothing. I will admit that. I am not willing to give up any of my civil liberties just to be able to cast a vote. ~sigh~ There are so many issues out there that will impact me and my family personally.

And then I found this, here:

On the fourth day of July, in 1776, a small group of men, representing 13 colonies in the far-off Americas, boldly told the most powerful nation on earth that they were free.

They declared, in terms that still are radical today, that all men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights that government neither grants nor can take away.

In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers sought to demonstrate to the world that they were rejecting a tyrannical king. They listed the “injuries and usurpations” that contain the philosophical basis for our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

One point of consternation to our founding fathers was that the king had been “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” But 230 years later, taxation with representation has not worked out much better.

Indeed, one has to wonder how Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would react to the current state of affairs. After all, they were outraged by mere import tariffs of a few pennies on the dollar. Today, the average American pays roughly 50 percent of their income in direct and indirect taxes.

In fact, most Texans will not start working for themselves for another week. Texans, like most Americans, work from January until early July just to pay their federal income taxes, state and local taxes, and the enormous costs of regulation. Only about half the year is spent working to pay for food, clothing, shelter, or education. It is easy to simply blame faceless bureaucrats and politicians for our current state of affairs, and they do bear much of the blame. But blame also rests with those who expect Washington DC to solve every problem under the sun. If the public demanded that Congress abide by the Constitution and pass only constitutional spending bills, politicians would have no choice but to respond.

Everybody seems to agree that government waste is rampant and spending should but cut—but not when it comes to their communities or pet projects. So members of Congress have every incentive to support spending bills and adopt a go-along, get-along attitude. This leads to the famous compromises, but the bill eventually comes due on April 15th.

Our basic problem is that we have lost sight of the simple premise that guided the actions of our founding fathers. That premise? The government that governs least is the government that governs best.

When we cut the size of government, our taxes will fall. When we reduce the power of the federal bureaucracy, the cost of government will plummet. And when we firmly fix our eyes, undistracted, on the principles of liberty, Americans truly will be free. That should be our new declaration.

This is copyrighted, and I shouldn't have copied more than 20%, but I wanted to share the entire thing. I will remove it, if asked, nicely.

Can you say massive crush? I saw an interview with Ron Paul the other night. He was talking about how he was against certain things, yet he respected other's opinion in the matters, and he would consider them. He also said that the Constitution of the United States was what lead him. He is not willing to give up any of our civil liberties so that we can feel falsely security. My NoNAIS is pushing him. However he is running under the GOP. But when he talks, it seems like the Rebublican he represents are the real ones {almost used the word traditional, but I didn't want too much confusion} Back in the day, Rebulblicans were for the people, like the Democrats are today. I found this incredible article, with this line; Republicans turn out to be not really Republican, and Democrats turn out to be not really Democrats: both sets of politicians operate together in a hazy and confused middle ground defined by special interest groups. Read the entire article here>>>

I guess I need to go ponder my politacal views while I patch up the barn, clean up the garden, and wrap up anything that really shouldn't freeze. But if you could, enlighten me a bit. Explain to me what is good and glorious about your canidate, I implore you.

And while you think about answering me, check out these blogs that make me think.



Supernatural Christian, she makes me think about my soul and the fact that I might just be going to hell. Thanks mom.

Wheel, I know some of you are going to head over there and say WHAT!?! Abbagirl makes me think about family, friends and work ethics.

Relationalisms, The Fool {which he isn't} makes me think about everything under the sun and the Aurora Borealis.

Parlancheq, makes me think about all the silliness in the world

Ran with the devil, makes me think about how lucky I truly am.

I dream of mending fences

I don't mean to say figuratively, but actually fixing a broken down cattle fence. Why? you ask, because I spent most of the day yesterday doing just that. And it seems to have seeped into my nocturnal life.

Some of the fencing was very bad off. You couldn't tell from just looking at them, you had to get on the ground and actually inspect. The goats and all their rubbing had popped loose the bottoms of the fences. I spent the day repairing those and anything else wrong I could find. I also caught the neighbors cat trying to get at my bannies. So barn mending is in order today.

Karen, I know you asked about a photo of a fertile egg. My camera's batteries are dead, so I will try to get that picture soon. I have asked my husband to purchase me a battery recharger for my birthday. I'll probably just get socks again.

While reading a cattle ranchers forum (they ask certain High level people why NAIS is good, in an open forum} I discovered an article by accident. One of those follow the link games we sometimes play. It was published back in Sept. in TheStar.com I found it very interesting.

First off, I had no idea that there was a program that taught people to be farmers, that is except FFA. I also knew, and have known for years that there was decline of young wanting to be farmers. There isn't much incentive to be one anymore. This article makes me want to head out across this wheat field and hug the farmer, Man I respect you.


Sep 23, 2007 04:30 AM

Catherine Porter
Environment Reporter
When Kurtis Andrews walks into his family's barn, he can't just ask one of the employees where his dad is. He has to ask for "Mr. Andrews." That's because few of the market staff know Kurtis anymore. They think he's another customer. Andrews spent 20 years working on the farm. When he was seven, he bought a bicycle with the money he'd saved weeding the fields by hand for $1 an hour. He's climbed the trees, built a swimming raft for the irrigation pond, and rumbled across the fields on a tractor. But now, he's a stranger here."It feels odd," says Andrews, 34, examining a 20-year-old family portrait that hangs in the barn. In it, he, his two sisters and their folks pose in a raspberry field, each of them dressed in red-and-white checkered shirts and holding a basket of berries. It's full of joy and optimism – hardly the picture of farming today."I do feel nostalgia about the farm," he says. Andrews is no longer a country boy. He lives six hours away, in Ottawa, where he's in his second year of law school. And he has no plans to return to the fields. Neither do most of his peers. The statistics are distressingly clear – young people are leaving farming in droves. In Ontario, the number of farm operators aged 35 and under plunged by 35 per cent between 1996 and 2001. Since then, it's dropped another 21 per cent. Only 8.6 per cent of farmers are in that age group today. Entire article can be found here>>>

A few weeks back when I first starting talking about moving a house {something that fell through because of the house movers} I said there was something else. It does have to do with farming. But as it isn't all sorted out yet, so I don't want to tell everything. Don't want to jinx it, if you will.

How do we encourage people to become farmers? With most of our food being needlessly shipped from other countries, ranchers leaving the US to ranch in Mongolia because of profits, working yourself rugged for little pay, just isn't appealing to most people. We need to sit down and reexamine our priorities. We can't all grow our own food, but we all must eat. Something needs to change before there is a food monopoly that has nothing to do with NAIS or the terminator seed. How do we, as eaters, help encourage new farmers?

A Bartered Thanksgiving

I wanted to discuss this, or maybe explain it better.

A Bartered Thanksgiving is about community. As homesteaders it is important to have a community, we can not do everything on our own and expect to survive. There are many of us that are isolated from everyone except online. And even though we are unable to physically help each other we can still do things by proxy. And this is the reason for A Bartered Thanksgiving.

When a crop fails, we need to help that farmer out by offering them foodstuff that we have an abundance of. Homesteaders pre-technology did this on a local basis. As a said, we as a online community are unable to do this, and the food credit, the imaginary trading, works in the same manner as if we were there to hand over a bag a flour.

Instead we trade local for local. Like Stephanie and I, she gets to purchase a bag of Kansas flour, while I go hunt down {not literally because I don't hunt. . . yet} a deer.


Also in keeping with the community spirit, for every food credit or barter done with me, I will prepare a dish with that item and take it to a local church to be given to a family in need.

It does a conscience good.

I have flour, honey, pecans, and sunflower seeds and oil to barter. What do you have?

Remember, no real food is switching hands. A food credit is being given. You may only barter food stuff that is locally grown in your area.

In a Single Day

Late last night my husband and I braved the horror, the danger that is a hen brooding. You would of been proud of me. I gave my husband the option of holding the top of the rabbit hutch open with one hand and grabbing the eggs with the other, or grabbing the hen. He wussed out and decided he would grab the eggs. With all the lights out and only my husband LED pen light, I grabbed the banny before she could attack. Her tail feathers spread, menacingly. She growled low, telling me to stay back, yet I pushed on, I would not allow this 1/3 of a chicken petrify me! I caught her behind her head, and was able to pull her out. Her head swiveled about like Reagan's did when she was possessed. haha! My hand stayed whole.

We went through the eggs, and all but three looked like this one.

Not fertile. 3 though looked to be on the cusp of hatching. Any day now we should have some chicks.

We also went to a cake auction for the local boyscout troop last night. The cake my oldest son made was called Don't Eat the Yellow Snow.

The other boys cracked up, and it even got the auctioneer laughing. There was only half as many people this year, and 20 boys crossed over to Boy scouts {oldest is actually still in cub scouts, he will cross over this year} This cake sold for $55US. Not bad.

And I wanted you to see one of the hens that our neighbor gave us.

I call her Mrs. Fluffybottoms.

Farm Bill and eating local barter

Now this is what I like to see;

FOR Americans who have been looking to Congress to reform the food system, these past few weeks have been, well, the best of times and the worst of times. A new politics has sprouted up around the farm bill, traditionally a parochial piece of legislation thrashed out in private between the various agricultural interests (wheat growers versus corn growers; meatpackers versus ranchers) without a whole lot of input or attention from mere eaters.

Not this year. The eaters have spoken, much to the consternation of farm-state legislators who have fought hard — and at least so far with success — to preserve the status quo.

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico. I highly encourage you to read the rest of it here>>>>>>

We need to keep the pressure up until it is no longer in our hands, click here to find out how to contact your state senators, not just about NAIS which these major food corps love, but the other BS that puts more money into their pockets.

People have already begun to talk about eating local for their Thanksgiving meal. You can find the original 100 mile diet here.

It can be difficult to make a typical traditional meal with only local ingredients. You have to get inventive. But you also need to do a little searching. Most your ingredients can be found locally. And then again, who says you have to have a turkey for Thanksgiving? As those of you that have read my article know, some people do ham, or even fish.

The biggest problem I have seen, or at least the one I get the most emails about, is local flour. Where and how do I find it? A web search can usually yield a result or two, and sometimes nothing at all. Basic rolls and desserts are hard to make without flour. So I am willing to make you a deal. We are going to barter. Those of you determined to make a local dinner but are unable to find flour, leave me a comment telling me what it is. I will do 1 of 2 things. First try to find you an alternative to your flour needs, failing that I will barter 1 of your abundant local food items for wheat. {this of course is purely imaginary barter} What will happen is that for every person I trade with, I will make one dish from that persons local food item. If you live in Washington State, and you need flour and are willing to trade me apples, I will make apple pie {see how this works, plus there are no local apples now because of the late hard freeze we had this year, so I need apples!} If I end up making 100 dishes, so be it, we like leftovers here.

And if it isn't flour you need, I have honey, sunflower seeds and oil as well as pecan. Think of this as emission credit trading.

So whose game? Of course I have a feeling that no one will. ~wry grin~

Oops, before I forget, Natures' Wheat and King Aurthur are made with Kansas wheat.

A Brutally Long Weekend

I woke early on Saturday morning, not quite ready to start my day, but the demand of all the males in the house made me so. Children were fed, animals were fed, and husband got coffee poured down his throat.

We need to get the barn ready for Firefly. I stupidly informed my husband. I am unsure what got him so motivated, but it was a scary look he held in his eyes. One that meant I would be dead sore by the end of the day.

We started off the day, 7 am, by burning. Some of the clutter and rotting wood around the homestead was pulled from its resting places and thrown into the burn barrel.

I managed to get distracted, call it homesteaders ADD. I began to scrub out the horse tank so that the geese would have a place to breed come early spring. The bottom was covered in a rust looking mud.
It took hours to scrub it out. And even then, it was still stained. But it was a used tank, so no complaints, really. While I was attempting to accomplish that task, a riding buddy of ours arrived with his newish wife {think the Sparks America Rally} He had come to retrieve motorcycle and car parts that he had first stored here years ago. Good! That means one side of the wall of the barn will be cleaned up, without me having to do it. I scrubbed and they cleaned.

I eventually got the horse tank done. Now Donkey can easily reach over and drink from it, Trina, who is part fainting/part Pygmy, had no chance. I brought over the ramp that was part of the goats playground, and leaned it against the side, propping it with old tires. They wanted nothing to do with it.

The geese, I managed to corner in the repurposed cattle pens. {These rails are actually upside down. They are meant to be placed on the side of a truck to transport animals. We are using them as a corral} I got the gander around the neck. He is rather passive with me, so no struggle or any, um. . . goosing occurred. I bundled him up in my arms and placed him in the tank. He swam to the edge, shook his tail feathers and promptly used the ramp to exit with a mocking honk. The goose was a little more difficult to round up. She wanted nothing to do with me, and tried to bite a few times. This aggravated the gander and he threatened me, but he didn't bite. I placed her in the tank and as soon as I let go, she was out. She wants nothing to do with it. But at least they now know it is there.

We went to work on the east side of the barn. There are boxes in there that have never been unpacked in the 6 years we have been there. We loaded up scrap metal onto a trailer we had borrowed. And my husband promptly broke the tubes of all those tv's I have told you about. 2 of them still held a charge. I started on the North side of the east side of the barn. Taking things apart, breaking things down for either the trash, burn barrel or repurposing. I took apart one of the televisions that my husband had broke. Things were going fine. I managed to break out most of the glass, leaving the very thick screen inside. This glass is held in place with a metal ring. I removed one screw that held it down, then moved on to the next. Without warning, the glass tv screen popped, a corner shattered, pelting my face with tinny bits of glass. I screamed once, and was silent. My 6 year old repeatedly asked if I was ok. I didn't answer because I didn't want to say something uncouth. I reached up, were my face burned, tiny droplets of blood had formed on my forehead, my cheek, and down my neck. I took a smoke break.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Lots of heavy lifting and burning. I did catch the goats using the tank.

And the boys and I watched as a Praying Mantis ate the head off a lady bug.

The next day was a lot of the same.

8pm Sunday night, we finished burning.