where did the summer go?

Here it is, August 21st, and summer is over. Well, it is if you live in Maine. The past few days have looked like fall and smelled like fall. I can't believe how fast the summer went though. Of course there will be days that are warm unntil September around here, and maybe even October, but they will be few and far between. We are moving into another season.

I actually love the change of seasons. It is one of the reasons I love New England so much (the cold winters are not one of the reasons :-)) But, the change to fall also reminds me that winter is just around the corner, and that we are not prepared at all for a cold winter with high heating costs.

I am seriously concerned about heating oil this winter. So concerned that Matt and I have invested in a wood stove. A lot of people say a wood stove isn't a great idea, but I think that it is. We are lucky enough to live in an area with friends who have large amounts of land in which to cut wood. I don't think that everyone should have a wood stove of course, I don't want to completely deplete the woods that we have in the state, but for us, right now, it is a good choice. We have the wood stove, now we have to figure out where to put it, and how to get a chimney in this house.

Our house is old, and the chimney is no good, well, at least it doesn't appear to be good. And the previous owner actually closed up the chimney top on the roof, so in order for us to even use the existing chimney, we need to put up a new chimney top. The part in the basement is completely ruined and really needs to be rebuilt. What is left? The chimney that is in the walls...the walls that Matt and I so carefully sheetrocked. Do we take apart the sheetrock and look to see if we can reuse the chimney? Do we take the whole chimney down and put a new chimney up? And do we build an actual chimney, or do we get one of those metal bestos chimneys (the latter is a much more cost effective option). There are a lot of choices. Not that we have a ton of money to get a chimney either, but I think that after all is said and done, we will have still spent less installing a woodstove and using wood for heat this winter than what we would pay to heat our house with oil (the choice heating fuel for New England).

Along with all of my concerns about keeping the house warm enough, are my concerns about getting a renter for our studio. The studio isn't finished yet, but it shouldn't take us too long, if we can get our butts in gear. I was hoping that my Nana would move up into the apartment, I think it would be best for everyone involved, but she is stubborn, and I don't think that she is going to make the trek up here. Maybe that is a good thing. I know that God will let happen what is supposed to happen as long as we continue to pray and trust in Him. What a process though. I'm still waiting for the *big sign* to know what we are supposed to do.

I know, I'm just a jumble of thoughts this morning. It seems like so much to think about, and it really is a lot to think about. We now have Emma, and I am a stay at home mom, there are a lot of uncertainties in our future. I just need to trust that God will provide, but why is that so difficult?

OK, well I guess that is all the doom and gloom I can muster for 8am :-) I hope that everyone is enjoying there summers! I certainly have been! And although I am concerned about the coming winter, I am looking forward to fall. Apple picking, tomato canning, and fair season! Yay!

stay at home mama

It is official...I am now a full time mama, and I couldn't be happier. I was worried about the reaction from the people that I worked with, and my family, but for the most part everyone has been really positive. Of course my mom just about died, but I figured that would happen. A single, independent woman who raised 2 kids on her own...of course she would worry. I, on the other hand, am not at all concerned. Well, money is always a concern, but I really need to just let it go and give it to God. He has never failed us in the past, and putting our trust and faith in Him is the most important thing.

I am overly excited about the opportunity I have to make my home my mission. I love to spend the days with Emma and have a clean house, so being able to be at home all day is great. Although, with an 11 week old, the house seems to definitely sit on the back burner. That's ok though :-) I am trying to be a litte more organized, and hopefully that will help out as well.

The big thing that I have heard (mostly from my mom) is "you've spent so much money on your college education!" That is the truth...in fact I will continue to be spending money on my college education for the foreseeable future. However, I really do believe that college was worth it, even if I do stay home full time. I majored in Business (which I personally think every person should major in, very useful information), and plan to use that knowledge to work our budget, as well as hopefully do some work from home. I have always enjoyed creating things, and hope that I can make some money off of it. I have been looking into the etsy shops, and think that it would be fun to have a little online business. It would combine a lot of what I love, creating, and organizing a business ;-) Plus, it isn't like I need to be at it constantly, so I can still spend as much time as I want with little miss Emma bean :-)

Ahhhh...new adventures...fun!

tornado

You know there is a problem when Maine is under a tornado watch...what the crap?!

work struggles

Well, it seems my work from home option isn't really as beneficial to the company as it is to me. My boss did put together a very generous offer of me going down to fewer hours, but still coming into the office to work for 1 day a week for 6 weeks, and then moving to 2 days a week and so on. The offer is generous, I appreciate that they are trying to work with me, but the first thing I did when I saw the offer was cry. I am disappointed that I can't at least attempt to work from home full-time for a period and see if it works out for them.

Now what do I do? Well, Emma doesn't take a bottle, so going into the office is out of the question unless I can bring her with me. And then there is the fact that I will most likely be expected to accomplish the same amount of work in fewer hours. I don't want to go back, but trusting God to provide for us is also a big obstacle. I know that He provides everything we need, but man, taking that leap is a huge test of faith.

I know that if we have a renter everything will be fine. I know that I could always get another job in the evenings, or possibly do some bookkeeping for people. I also know that I want to be a full time mom. I want to be a homemaker, I enjoy that. I know that I probably could force Emma to take a bottle if I refused to breast feed her, but really, why would I want to torture my child just so that I can go back to work?

All of this is such a struggle. I want to do what is right for my family. I want to do what God wants me to do. But, how do I know what path is the right path? I am leaning towards not going back to work at all, obviously, but is that just because I don't want to go back to work? Or is it because that is what God wants for me?

The other difficulty is the fact that I love the people I work with/for, and my job is amazing. I loved going into work everyday, eating lunch with everyone and spewing off loads of simple living info I have gathered. I enjoyed all of it. But, maybe it is time to move on, and just hope that everything falls into place financially?? Ahhh...being 27...too many decisions! But in the meantime, if anyone out in blogland wants to move to Maine and into a brand new studio apartment, let me know :-)

no idea for a title :-)

I've been neglecting my blog again. I don't know how it happens, but days and weeks seem to fly by now. Once you have a baby life seriously does change. Not that I am complaining, but the summer is half over already! Well, it is in Maine at least :-) My maternity leave ends in just 2 weeks. How sad. I have really been enjoying being a full time mama.

Last week I went into work to talk to my boss about working from home. I'm not entirely sure how it was taken. I sent in a work from home proposal on Monday. I haven't heard anything back yet. I'm hoping that they let me at least attempt to telecommute. It is a good option, since I am an accountant and all, and I can login to my work computer from home. Really, there is nothing that I can't do at home besides signing off on invoices, which I could do in the evenings if I needed to. Not a big deal. Whether my boss and his boss will think that is reasonable...no idea. Let's all keep our fingers crossed though!

My garden is doing really well this year. My peppers are growing really well, tomatoes are doing well, and the cukes are doing well. I ended up with a zucchini plant that I thought was a cucumber (yeah I really know nothing about plants). I thought I had bought a zuke plant, but convinced myself that I hadn't because it looked like the cucumber plants. So, that isn't doing too well since it is in a tiny pot. I'm hoping to get a bigger pot this weekend and see if I can transplant it. It's already dying, so if it dies from me transplanting it, well, such is life. Next year I will try and pay better attention to the tags before I plant.

The CSA is going great as well. I know I haven't been posting the pictures, and I really want to, I just have zero time. I'm excited that I have a second to sit down and write for a minute. Who would have known being a parent would be so tiring and not allow a lot of time for "extra" things. Well, maybe once she is a tad bigger it will go a little smoother. This past week we got 2 bags of new potatoes, 2 bunches of carrots, a bunch of dill, 4 zucchinis, a red cabbage, 2 bags of peas...oh and some early onions. All of it is really good. I shelled the peas yesterday and plan to freeze them. I think I will freeze the carrots too. The potatoes have been fried up with the zukes, yum :-)

We are currently working on changing the upstairs into a studio apartment. Our house is technically a duplex, but the upstairs is not really a great 2BR apartment, because the kitchen is kind of small. But, the living room upstairs is huge. I think it would be great as a studio. Plus, then we would only have one person living above us, instead of the family of 4 and sometimes 5 we had up there before. This area is not the best for rental income, so having that many people really just made us lose money. We are trying to get my Nana to move up there, she is 88 and paying more than her social security on oil. Not sure if she will come though. She has been in her house for the past 50+ years, and is stubborn...If not, we will try and get someone else from around here.

There is an awful lot going on in my life right now, lot's of thinking going on. I guess that is all I do though, think. Trying to figure out life constantly. I am trying to simplify my life, but man is it difficult. It makes me wish that I had thought of all of this simplification before I got into so much debt! I keep thinking, if we could just pay off the student loans, or if we could just pay off the car, or sell our land we would be set. Yet, none of those things are happening right now. The economy isn't great at all. I'm worried that it is going to be a long time before it gets better. And if it doesn't get better, what can I do to make sure that my family is ok? I know, I am always thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen, but sometimes I wonder how right I am. Last year I was convinced that the economy was going to keep getting worse, it has. I was telling my bosses in one of our lovely lunches that we were going to start seeing food shortages, we have. Maybe not us personally, but all over the rest of the world definitely. And think of how much food costs have continued to rise?! I'm worried about the ethanol production, and continuing to have farmers farm corn and soybeans for fuel. That's just wrong, especially when people out there are starving. And our dependence on foreign oil? Yeah, it is a lot to get my head around. Seriously my head just keeps spinning and spinning. I guess that is why my posts are so disjointed :-)

Matt and I, well more me than Matt, are thinking a lot about what food we need in order to survive. How much can we do ourselves, how much would we need to get from other people. Well, as of right now all of it. I am hopeful my garden will produce a lot so that I can can and preserve, but tomatoes and pickles are not going to sustain us for the entire winter ;-) I've been trying to source farmers in Maine that grow what we need, wheat for flour, oats for oatmeal, meat (actually already buy the majority of our meat from Snafu Acres). Milk...well...I don't like milk as it is, so I'm not sure I can really go for the raw milk, not to mention it is almost $8 for a glass bottle...not sure how big the bottles are, but I did see them at the health food store. We'll get there I guess at some point. I'm planning on building the raised beds in the fall. Any ideas on what I am supposed to do in the fall? This is why I do container gardening...easier to figure out :-) I think I read somewhere that I need to put newspaper down and then put soil on top of it. What kind of soil though? I guess I still have a lot of research to do. I'll keep my fingers crossed that we can get everything all done in the fall. We also need to put up a fence to keep out all the animals that live around our house...and to keep the neighbor from mowing our lawn. How can we ask the neighbor to stop mowing our lawn? It is very nice of him, and he is a retired veteran, but I don't like that he kills our lawn. And I was hoping to be able to pick some of the dandelion greens, since that is just about our entire lawn. Ahh well, when the fence is up it will obviously give him the hint...hopefully :-)

OK, well I guess that is about as much jumbled writing as I can manage right now. I hope that I will post more frequently, but we all know that is a stretch :-)

CSA week 3

I can't believe that we already are picking up our 3rd week's share. The summer is starting to fly by...I guess having a new baby does that. It's crazy to me that little Miss Emma is going to be 6 weeks on Monday...yeah...crazy. So I am a little behind in posting...what a surprise. I'm hoping eventually someday my life will resemble order again. Perhaps not with a baby though...Onto this weeks goods!

This week our basket was even bigger than the past 2 weeks. Literally, the basket that holds our produce had doubled in size. We got the following:

2 bags of beets
3 bags of lettuce
1 bag of spinach which looks like baby swiss chard
1 bag of carrots
1 bag of broccoli
1 bunch of green onions

Now, I don't know what the grocery prices are like for anyone else out there, but that amount of produce probably would have cost us around $50 at the grocery store (seeing as how our CSA farm is certified Organic). And we got it for a mere $20, not bad right? I am really excited to see how the weeks progress. Since we are in Maine it takes a little longer for produce to come in during the summer, so the beginning is a lot of greens, but once we get into July and August, I foresee a large amount of veggies coming through...I just wish we had a way to preserve lettuce. Now for some pictures :-)

2008 Garden!!!

OK, so I can't seem to post more than once in a great while. I am really hoping to change that now that we have our precious baby Emma home and I am feeling so much better. I won't get into the details of my labor and delivery, let's just say that it didn't go nearly as well as I had hoped. But, on the bright side, I now have this perfect little person at home with me who has brought so much joy to my life and Matt's life. We are extremely blessed!

Now onto my *container* garden for this year! Matt and I finally got everything into the pots this past weekend. I was getting worried that we wouldn't actually be able to plant all the seedlings, but alas, Nana was able to come and watch the little one for a couple hours while we worked outside. I ended up with 6 Brandywine tomato plants, 6 roma tomato plants, 6 basil, 3 cilantro, 2 sweet peppers, 1 jalapeno pepper, and either 3 cucumber plants or 2 cucumbers and a zucchinni. I swear that I bought a zuke plant, but for the life of me, I can't actually see where I put it or planted it. And I also can't remember if we ended up buying 2 or 3 cucumber plants this year. I have a feeling I lost the zucchini plant in transit, don't ask me how.

So here are some pictures of my beautiful garden space up on the high high deck, which, by the way, I am extremely happy we have now. My mom had a ton of herbs up on her deck in pots (she lives just down the street from us), and something got up on the deck and ate them all...along with most of her flowers. We are thinking woodchucks, but can they climb stairs? Never seen any rabbits around here...so we are at a loss...and my mom is seriously upset about it. I'm all for nature, but when something comes up on the deck and eats the plants...come on! That's why I'm happy that any animals that want to eat our plants have to climb up 20 steps to get to our deck ;-) Oh yeah...pictures :-)

I also wanted to talk about my CSA share. I meant to actually post a picture last week for our first share pickup, but in order to post the picture we actually would have needed to take a picture. So instead I will tell you what we got last week. In our 1st CSA share ever we received:

2 huge bags of spinach
5 baby beets and beet greens
3 bags of lettuce
1 bunch of scallions
1 bunch of radishes
2 chinese cabbage

It was a lot of food, and actually we still have a lot of it left over which is interesting. I thought for sure we would eat it all, but apparently I was wrong! Not that I mind having extra lettuce, might as well eat as many fresh salads as possible :-)

This week we received:

8 beets with beet greens (obsviously they come with the greens, but I find that is a whole other meal side)
1 bunch of carrots
2 bags of spinach that looks like baby beet greens (but the board at the farm assured me it was actually spinach, the type I can't remember at this point)
1 bag of lettuce

Now onto the pictures :-)