What I'm Thankful For

When I posted Saturday I was angry. Someone came up on to our back porch and stole my partner's bicycle. It's not just about the bicycle. My partner had been injured in a car accident many years ago which made it painful to sit on a bike. She's healed a lot since then and decided just a couple of weeks ago to buy a new bike and start riding again. It brought her so much joy to ride again and it was all taken away from her.
But this post is about all the things I'm thankful for. I find it helpful to think of things that are going well when something else is going poorly.
I have my family. Everyone is healthy. My youngest just got her hearing aids on Friday so now she can hear the normal human range of sound. I took a picture of her sleeping with my partner on our hammock.
Speaking of the hammock, nothing else was stolen. All that was taken was the bike.
We had a litter of rabbits born Saturday. Only one survived out of a litter of eight. That's still better than our first litter. Our first litter was born last October and they all died. The one that lived is doing well. It's hard to tell genders at this age. If it is a boy I'm naming it Harey Pot- Pie. A reference to "The boy that lived" and a dish he may be served in a couple of months.
Daddy rabbit should be thankful. I didn't know the Rosemary was pregnant. I thought he may have been sterile, since he hadn't had any litters yet. I was about to get a replacement stud and serve him for dinner.
My peas are growing well. I don't see any carrots coming up yet. I think we planted them too deep. The herbs, onions, and Swiss chard came back on their own. I also moved some red raspberry bushes to thin them out. Nothing else had been planted yet, but my brother has several plants he started indoors that will be moving out shortly and some will be planted in my garden.
I got enough financial aid to cover tuition and books for my last semester of nursing school. It's almost over. Just one more test and this semester is over. I have the summer off. It's going to be nice to have a break from school before the last push to finish my degree.
There are many more things I'm thankful for. Supportive family and friends. Cool stuff listed for free on craigslist like a proper hutch for the male rabbit. Decent grades. I could go on, but the bus is dropping me off at school and I have to get to class.

H is for Helping Others

An important part of paganism, as I understand it, is the belief that we are part of an interconnected world. From the circle of life to karma, there are many explanations of that interconnectedness.  This is why helping others with no expectations of a return is part of my personal path. It's a paradox. Helping others without expecting a return guarantees a return.
I volunteer my time with Rochester Roots. It's a community supported agriculture group that works with the Rochester Public School system to provide education to inner city children and also sells shares of their produce at an affordable cost. If you want to learn more about them, check out their website www.rochesterroots.org
Today they had a work day. Several volunteers, including my family, descended on the garden to help clean it up and get it ready for planting. We all had a blast. And we helped our community at the same time.
When people think of paganism they think of the rituals and holy days. But I find the most meaning in everyday paganism. The littlest moments seem to hold the most magic. The rituals are important, but equally as important is carrying that spirituality and meaning into your daily life and out into the world where it can do it's work.

Happy Ostara

It was Ostara yesterday here in the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the beginning of Spring. The weather is warming and the snow is finally melting. I know I am excited by the prospect of winter ending.
Soon we will be planting the spring crop, mostly leafy green vegetables. I will put a fresh layer of compost in the garden to feed this year's plants. I also have a few new raised beds that will need to be filled prior to planting.
Also new this year are the rabbits. They are mature now and both does have been bred. We will expect their litters in a few weeks in early April. We are excited and hope that this time we can keep the kits alive. Our first litter was delivered late October and they got too cold and didn't make it.
I am also still in school and starting the maternity segment of nursing school. It's only eight weeks long and is going to be a lot of work in a short amount of time.
Of course I also have my wonderful partner and our daughters. The two year old has so much energy and wants to help. The two month old just wants to be held all the time. They make any task more complicated, but I wouldn't trade them for the world.
This spring we have so much going on and so much to be thankful for. We gladly welcome in the Spring and all the blessings it will bring!

Getting ready

It's February now and we are getting ready for spring. There is a foot of snow on the ground, but we know it won't be long now.
We currently have cold weather plants in the cold frames that were planted last fall that are just waiting for warmer temperatures to really take off. We also have three rabbits (one male and two females) and we are waiting for warmer weather before breeding them.
This year we are moving the compost pile. The current location is not large enough any more. Any compost that is ready will be used in the raised beds I finished before winter set in and the rest will be moved to the new location.
Also on the to do list is building a shed. It will be used to house the rabbits and chicken in cold weather and to site yard tools when the animals are in their hutches. The plan is to do that this week while the weather is above freezing. I'll post pictures when complete.
I leave you a picture of one of my daughters with a rabbit. She really is excited holding him.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I have given some thought to the things I am thankful for. I am thankful for many things, but chief among them is my family. In particular I am writing about my daughter.

My daughter is wonderful. She is a very happy child (most of the time) and very active as well. She just turned two and her vocabulary is exploding. Every day it seems she knows a new word.

My daughter makes me excited about the future. Every time I look at her I see a multitude of possibilities. I can't wait to find out what she chooses to do. Her life is like a really good book I can't put down.
Right now she like to climb. Maybe she'll become a professional rock climber. She's very photogenic. Maybe she'll be an actress or model. Both of her parents are smart. Maybe she'll go to college and become a world famous mathematician or astrophysicist. She likes blocks and trains, so maybe she'll be an engineer or architect. Or maybe she will have a smaller life, but one still full of meaning.

One thing is for certain. I can't wait.

What's New

It's been a really long time since I last posted. My daughter is waking up so here is a quick list of what's new.

I finally have rabbits, but, thanks to a mistake, I have two females instead of a male and a female.

I have mini hoop houses on my raised beds.

One of my dogs died.

I have another daughter on the way.

I just got a scholarship for school.

I think that covers the big things. I will make a more detailed post later.

C is for Community

Part of what defines a shaman is their community. Shamans use their ability to move between the worlds and effect change for the betterment of their communities. In traditional cultures, the shaman is a respected member of the village who is sought out for his or her knowledge and power.
But what of those of us who are trying to reclaim our shamanic heritage after generations of religious suppression? My neighbors don't believe the way I do. If I explained what a soul retrieval was they would probably think I was crazy. So what constitutes my community?
I have given a lot of thought towards answering this question. The honest answer is that I am still not sure. Right now I would define my community as those I have formed relationships with. My community is my friends, family, and the plants, animals, and spirits that share the land I live on.

Parenting

I've been working a lot of overnight jobs lately. One of the things that happens in the small hours of the night is that it gives you a lot of time to think. Since I have a one year old, the thing I think the most about is how I plan to parent.
I have known that I was smarter than most of the people around me since I was young. I've always been an A student. I'm not very creative, but I can learn anything I set my mind to. My partner has a doctorate and a masters. We are both smart, and it is already evident that our daughter is intelligent and inquisitive.
We plan to home school our daughter which is going to be an interesting challenge. I want to help her live up to her full potential; something that unfortunately the public school system will not be able to give her. There are students in my college classes that have yet to master the basics of spelling and grammar. Unschooling seems to be a homeschooling method that promises to help teach life long learning skills that will continue to be of value all her life. I recently read a very good book about it on Amazon Kindle called Intuitive Unschooling.
But I realized that I don't feel that I have lived up to my own potential. I only have an associate's degree, even though I am intelligent enough to get a higher degree. Plus there are a lot of things that I have always wanted to learn, but never put forth the effort. I didn't have anyone who encouraged me to be the exceptional person I could be. My grandparents didn't do that for my parents and they didn't do it for me.
I plan to do it for my daughter. I want her to know that she is smart and she can be great at whatever she wants to do. I want to encourage her to seek out learning opportunities. I want her to develop to her fullest potential because I know she can change the world. But I don't want to be a hypocrite. I always thought people like that were ridiculous. I'm sure we've all seen the adult who tells a kid to never smoke as they light up their own cigarette. So I plan to do something about it.
I'm already in nursing school and plan to continue my education though a master's degree in nursing. I have always wanted to learn martial arts, so I registered today for my first martial arts class. There are other things  that I've always wanted to do, and skills I've wanted to learn. This year I am going to become proactive in my own personal development. I want my daughter to achieve great things, not just because I've told her she can, but because she has seen me do it. I want to be her role model, and more than that, I want to be the person I've always wanted to be.

Countdown to Nursing School

The big news is that I have been accepted into the nursing program. With that comes the frantic scramble to get all of the paperwork in order before classes start. A lot if it is done already, but there are a couple of things I still have to finish before class starts on the 23rd.
I have a mini class that begins tomorrow that is supposed to help prepare me to be the best nursing student I can be. I'm taking it mainly to bring me up to twelve credit hours so I can get the most out of my financial aid. It will probably be helpful though.
We want to get chickens this year and the city allows ownership of up to six hens (no roosters) as long as we have a coop and run that is approved by a city inspector. I want to build one from as much recycled and scavenged material as possible to see how cheaply I can build it. Also for the challenge. My original goal was to complete the coop before school starts, so we will see how it goes.
I am going to build the coop primarily out of wooden pallets. I also have a piece of roofing left over from the patch job we did on the roof a few months ago. I don't have any chicken wire yet, but I'm hoping some will show up on Craigslist. Of course I will blog about it and post pictures of my progress. I got an off brand reciprocating saw from Harbor Freight  Tools for $20 with a coupon to help dismantle the pallets faster.
My daughter is as cute and adorable as ever. My wife and I both got an avalanche of contact work, so we are set financially. Things are good, if busy.

We'll see how the next couple of weeks go. Hopefully I'll have the coop done on time.

Healthy Food Cheap

Fall semester is almost over with. I only have this last week of finals left. Wrapping up my Introduction to Sociology class, I was asked to write a paper about poverty. I learned a lot while writing that paper. Did you know that an individual that is considered impoverished is expected to feed themselves for only ten dollars a day? There are a lot of people that spend more than that on a single meal. For my paper I kept track of the cost of my food and I was surprised by my results. Here is an excerpt from my paper.

"I have attempted to learn more about the link between poverty and food. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty threshold for a single person was $11,702; the amount for my family, two adults and one child, $18,106 (Poverty Thresholds for 2011 by Size of Family and Number of Related Children Under 18 Years). This means that if I were living by myself I would be expected to spend about ten dollars a day on food, and the amount allotted for my whole family is about sixteen dollars and fifty cents.

Because my family lives near the poverty threshold, we eat cheaply whenever we can by buying local whole food. It is much cheaper and healthier than purchasing processed food. For the purpose of this assignment I kept track of what I personally ate for one day.

I belong to Rochester Roots, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I pay twenty-one dollars a week for fresh farm produce grown locally. Some of it comes from the small garden right across the street from my house. Last week I received parsnips, carrots, broccoli, potatoes, butternut squash, apples, beets, Swiss chard and celery root.

For breakfast I had a large filling breakfast. I used two potatoes from last week’s CSA, an onion from the week before, and two eggs from Wegman’s. Eighteen eggs from Wegman’s cost $2.68. I diced and boiled the potatoes, then fried them in a skillet with Rooster Sauce. I added diced onions, and when they were done cooking, I scrambled the eggs. I estimate this breakfast cost me less than fifty cents.

I also had a cup of healthy coffee from Organo Gold. Because I have just started an Organo Gold business, I got my latte wholesale for eighty-seven cents. After shipping costs, it probably works out to about one dollar.

For lunch I had a delicious venison stew. I went hunting this year and shot the deer myself. It cost sixty dollars to butcher it and I got back forty pounds of meat, so it cost a dollar fifty per pound. We used about two pounds of venison in the stew. We also used Swiss chard, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onion, celery root, beets, and broccoli. We put about half the vegetables we got from the CSA last week in the stew. We also added some herbs from our garden last year. We estimate that we made about three gallons of soup for about fifteen dollars. Since I ate two cups, my lunch cost about seventy-five cents.

A few days ago, we made butternut squash apple soup. We used four butternut squash and a dozen apples from the CSA, some chopped ginger, and two quarts of organic chicken stock. The chicken stock costs two quarts for five dollars from Wegman’s. The result was approximately a gallon of soup for less than ten dollars. My leftovers cost about a dollar fifty.

That was a whole day’s worth of food for less than five dollars! Because we made large batches, I can continue to eat like this for the rest of the week. You will notice that the only processed foods that were consumed were the coffee and the stock. Those items also had the highest cost.

Since we eat like this most of the time, it was pretty easy for me to stay within the budget. The most exciting thing about this project was finding out how cheaply we were able to feed our family. A lot of people eat heavily processed food which has a higher cost and less nutrition. Our food was cheap and nutritious. Eating locally grown, whole foods is better for the environment, your health, and your wallet."

"Works Cited:

“Poverty Thresholds for 2011 by Size of Family and Number of Related Children Under 18 Years”. United States’ Census Bureau. 8 December 2012. <http://www.census.gov>"

The moral of this story? Support your local farmers. Go to farmers' markets, find local CSAs, grow a garden. The food you find will be cheaper and healthier.

New Direction

You may not know it, but I've actually been unemployed for quite some time. Dental hygiene does not have a good job market so I've been staying home with my daughter. My wife works and has become the breadwinner while I have been raising and taking care of the baby and running a household. You would think not working a job would give me more downtime. Any stay at home parent can tell you that raising a child and running a household doesn't really have a lot of down time. But it is giving me some time to think about where my life is going and where I want it to go.

My daughter and I at the zoo

I have recently enrolled at a local community college and I'm going back to school to get a degree in nursing. Being a licensed nurse would give me a better salary, better job market and benefits. But we're also looking into moving out of the city. We live inside the city limits and it's not a great neighborhood. My wife's son was held up by a 12 year old with a gun a couple of weeks ago just down the street from us. It turns out it was just a bb gun replica, but it looks just like the real thing when all you can see is the handle sticking out of someone's pants. It's not a great neighborhood and we don't wanna raise our daughter here in the city (her son lives with his dad in the country).

We have joined a couple of sustainability and homesteading groups on Facebook. We are interested in moving into a communal homestead. We have actually found one that sounds great to me. I'ts all the way at the tip top of Maine. They grow their own food and raise livestock. It sounds awesome, but the only problem is that Heather is a chiropractor. Getting a chiropractors license in Maine is a major pain in the ass. Otherwise the place is perfect. It's even run by pagans which means we don't have to worry about having religious conflicts with our neighbors.

Over the next couple of years I'm going to be in school (I start next month). Who knows, maybe we'll find a nice community to move to and get out of the city before I finish my degree. In any case things will get real interesting from here. I will continue to find time to do some blogs, hopefully more often than I've been doing lately. It's very difficult to get a blog written when you have a 10 month old trying to bang on the keyboard while you are writing. Until next time.