It's Easy Being Green

…we’d like to wish everyone a Very Hoppy Easter from all of us (four-legged, two-legged, furry and feathered) here at the Half-Acre Homestead!

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The daffodils around the Half-Acre homestead decided last Friday, the day of our tornado havoc here in the Midwest, was the best day to start blooming. It’s a bit early for both daffodils and tornadoes but both seem to indicate we really won’t be experiencing a winter this year.

As if last Friday wasn’t odd enough, Bertha (our one chicken who lays a brown egg) decided it was a good day to start dropping eggs after a 6-week long egg laying hiatus. Maybe it was the insane pressure drop as one of those funnel clouds passed over the Half-Acre Homestead.

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Its hard to believe we have wiped out the first month of the new year already. I’m still thinking about goals for 2012 so that should give you some idea of how much I truly care about the whole new year, new you crap. That’s why this year, I’m celebrating Losar, the Tibetan New Year’s celebration beginning on February 22nd and lasting a paltry 15 days. It seems the Tibetans really know how to get their new year started right!

Stateside, I’m convinced the New Years’ holiday is nothing more than a ploy by champagne companies to put themselves back in the black. It is truly one of the only times people buy champagne in any noticeable amount. Aside from that, folks just seem to be looking for the next opportunity to get smashed and an excuse to “start over for the next year”.

I’ve never been a fan of the holiday, except that year in high school my parents let me hit a few swigs off the bottle of Moet Chandon White Star that my dad picked up. It led to us carousing in the street with some roudy neighbors and an eventual flyby of the ghetto bird (a.k.a. the local police helicopter). The crew even spotlighted us, searching for the local ruffians setting off the illegal fireworks another street over but I digress.

That lack of enthusiasm for New Year’s has led me to blow over the holiday and and instead spend some time reflecting on what I would like to accomplish in the coming year. That’s why, based on the timing, I’ll celebrate with the Tibetans this year. Happy Losar!

I certainly have goals for 2012 but definitely not resolutions. I don’t resolve myself to anything. Instead I create goals and work toward them. It doesn’t set you up to fail quite like resolutions do.

My goals for 2012 are pretty simplistic:

- Learn to make kombucha

- Preserve more food for winter months

- Increase garden harvest for seasonal eating

- Ace growing and harvesting squash

- Read at least one book per month (mainly talking about novels here)

- Build 2 pieces of furniture and a toy for each girl

- Buy a fuel efficient hybrid or electric vehicle

- Brew more beer or try to make a wine or mead

- Take a REAL family vacation, even if for only a weekend getaway

- Get those six pack abs and bulk up my arms and chest

Okay, so the last goal is a bit narcissistic and different from the rest but its something I’ve wanted to do for myself for a long time. I’ve let the business of work and kids be my lame ass excuse on that one but now that has to go by the wayside. We’ll see how many goals I can achieve over the next 11 months, or shall I say 12, since I’m now going to run on the Tibetan calendar. Here’s to wishing you and yours a very Happy Losar!

How about you? Did you formulate some goals for 2012? What do you hope to accomplish to better your life, your impact on the environment or live more sustainably? Share by posting a comment below.

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Proof positive that raised bed gardening has its perks: I unearthed these gems this cold late December afternoon out in the garden here at the Half-Acre Homestead. These were planted in late spring and there are many more in line to mature behind them. For anybody who doubts you can grow your own food in the winter this should tell you otherwise!

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Now that we’re in full-fledged toddler mode around the Half-Acre Homestead, it’s exciting to step up the Christmas game a few notches. Like a cranky body snatcher sneaking in overnight, the terrible terrible twos have taken over my Darling Daughter’s little body. It’s been enough to send my Homestead Hottie and me up the crazy wall, wondering on an almost minute by minute basis what creature has possessed that sweet  pixie-faced little redhead of ours.

This Christmas we thought what better of a way to reinforce good behaviors then to join the Elf on a Shelf craze. We’ve heard good reports from hundreds of other parents who swear by this little elf’s ability to keep everyone good little girls and boys during the month of December. We balked at the $29 price tag of that little creepy looking elf and instead opted to go with the cheaper, cuter and oh yeah “original”, Christopher Popinkins. Darling Daughter Everly has gotten into the daily search for our friendly elf and boy, that gets to be a challenge to find a new place to pose the little snooper.

Imagine my surprise when I found out Jill over at baby rabies is putting on an Inappropriate Elf Contest. The idea: pose your elf in an inappropriate way yet keep it PG-13. So many ideas immediately went out the window with that rule but one still remained. There must be at least one elf that gets a little too merry some night, right? If you think the picture below is bad, you should see what Talina caught him doing before he finally passed out. After all, there’s a lot of pressure for one little elf to handle this time of year!

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We’re getting a crisp taste of fall here at the Half-Acre Homestead. We swung from the century mark down to about 60-degrees and all within a few hours this past weekend. We’re now donning light jackets to sneak out and take our evening stroll through the garden and I definitely am having to zip up when I go out and make the nightly rounds with our crazy menagerie of animals outside.

Despite feeling extremely sick to her stomach for reasons we'd later understand, my Homestead Hottie climbed right in to apple picking.

Looking for a break from the daily routine with our toddler and newborn, Homestead Hottie and I decided we wanted to get out and enjoy one of the fall activities we’ve come to really enjoy: picking apples. The first year we moved here we went to a u-pick apple orchard located in the middle of town. It was the staple of many family traditions in the area. We pulled up into the dusty parking pad to find three children and a horse hanging out in a small plywood shelter. After paying our money we were handed our two picking bags and off we went.

At some point during this excursion, walking up and down row upon row of this apple orchard, we came to the conclusion Homestead Hottie was pregnant with our first Darling Daughter. She looked greener and greener around the gills with each passing moment and at one point thought she was going to pass out. Needless to say, this apple picking excursion was the beginning of our realization we were headed down the path to parenthood. Memories were made and so was a lot of applesauce.

Instead of climbing, I took aim at the tops of the apple trees with one very handing wooden stick and would catch my results as they fell.

Fast forward three years and we’ve been super stoked to see our friend Joe Engelbrecht working on getting his fourth generation orchard up and running. While we couldn’t u-pick at his orchard last year, we bought plenty and plenty of apples from his farm store and turned them into preserved apple slices and several canning jars full of apple butter. In my opinion, they are some quintessential treats of fall.

This year, Joe’s u-pick orchard is up and running and we didn’t hesitate to jump in the first weekend we could. We know the longer you wait in the season to pick, the harder it is to find some good quality fruit so we didn’t want to drag our feet. After purchasing our picking bags at Joe’s store (he was charging $1 per pound and you got to decide between 5 or 10 pound bags), we were given directions on how to access the gravel trail meandering through adjacent corn fields and to the orchard laid out nicely on the slope above the store.

Pulling up to the rustic red barn marking the entrance to the orchard, you could begin reading the signs marking each row of apple trees. Much to Homestead Hottie’s excitement were a row or two of Jonagold apples. These are her favorite “everyday” eating apples and a variety our family chiropractor turned us onto when he discovered Talina didn’t like the texture or taste of most apples.

The orchard was overloaded with apples when we paid a visit with plenty still in our Darling Daughter's reach.

We quickly filled up a 5-pound bag of Jonagold apples after walking just one or two trees deep down the row. I wanted to get a mixed bag of a few of the other varieties Joe has to offer including Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Braeburn. These three varieties aren’t quite at their peak of ripeness yet but I’m sure several days on the counter will help them get there.

Everly had a blast sprinting from tree to tree and gazing at the trees, overloaded with one of her favorite fruits to snack on. She even had a few apples that were within her short reach that she was able to pick and this made her quite proud. In fact, one of those apples didn’t even make it into the bag but instead landed firmly in her mouth. It was her picking fuel and the ultimate test of the quality of Joe’s apple crop. Everly definitely approved because aside from a shared bite or two, she downed that thing. Baby Adalyn slept the entire time we off-roaded her stroller up and down the orchard rows so she must have been enjoying herself too.

If you’re looking for a fun family activity to do one of these fall weekends, I would definitely recommend heading to Joe Engelbrecth’s Fourth Generation Orchard to pick some fresh apples. Not only are you supporting a local farmer by doing so, you’re supporting a unique local business. Joe and his wife are carving a very unique niche for themselves in the Evansville area and hopefully will find further prosperity here in the future. Happy picking!

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My Homestead Hottie did it: another amazing labor and delivery at  The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. Two and a half weeks of high-anticipation ended at 2am Tuesday morning when baby Adalyn finally decided to show her face to the world! My wife once again did it with the most surreal zen-like confidence and calm.

We’re so excited but exhausted. Talina streamed the birth live over on her blog at Harvest of Daily Life and if you’re interested, you can catch a recording there too. This has been another amazing stay at The Farm, a place where we are considered part of one large but tight-knit community of like-minded people. Special thanks to our midwife Pamela Hunt for her grace and assurance as she brought our second daughter into the world.

Once things calm back down, I’m sure we’ll piece together our birth stories. Three posts back you can find a link to our birth story with Everly from two years ago. It was another amazing experience and one that will forever connect us with these1500 acres in the middle of the Blackjack Oak woods in the middle of southern Tennessee.

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