The Weather...

     So the weather has been a huge hindrance to my completion of the garden boxes. If it hasn't been rainy then it's been snowing. Today although 24F is bright and sunny, but it's a bitter cold. I also have decided to forgo building today because Laura has to work tonight and pounding on some wood right outside would probably wake her up. I know tomorrow should be a much better day and I am hoping to totally finish both boxes complete with dirt. Tomorrow should be a lot of work but I think that it will be worth it in the end (though I'm sure my body will disagree tomorrow night, but hey that's what warm baths are for).
     Laura and I went out to breakfast this morning and then headed to the farm supply store, she wanted to see the baby chicks. She loved them and thought the little Rhode Island Reds were cute! We also made a joint decision that next spring regardless of them being "illegal" (which maybe that will resolve by then?) we are going to have a few of our own backyard hens! The farm store also had a sign that said bunnies will be here March 7th. So we will get our cute bunny overload then! I am still trying to convince her a bunny is a good idea, but maybe we should also wait till next spring? While a bunny does not really take that much care we have some other things we should save and spend money on (like gutters and the roof over the garage).    

Garden Box 1: Officially Complete!

So as I said I was going to complete box 1 and add some photos. Most of the entry today will be photos and captions.

Garden Box 1 after yesterday's work

After adding weed paper (to keep out the weeds) and wire (to keep out the burrowing critters) on the bottom.

Upside right and ready for dirt

Half way filled with dirt

Boy my gloves sure did get dirty

I sure am glad I'm almost done! Dirt is crazy heavy!

It is done! Well except for the frozen clods of dirt I have to go spread around tomorrow.

Today was a lot of fun but also a lot of work. I am hoping that the weather stays nice that way I can at least build box two tomorrow. I doubt I will get the dirt in it because class runs later, but just getting it built will be a big achievement for me. 

Garden Box 1

So tonight after school I came home and built the first garden box of the season! Unfortunately I was unable to find my camera while it was still light outside to take pictures, but I will tomorrow (or I suppose when looking at the time later today). It was actually a bunch of fun and I cannot wait to build the other two. I also went to Menards tonight to purchase the mixture of things that will become the soil for my beds. Each bed will be comprised of 5 2.2cuft bags of Sphagnum Peat Moss, 10 40pd bags of organic composted manure, and 21 40pd bags of top soil. For my first bed I was able to get the peat and the compost, but no top soil due to the limitations of my car. Hopefully tomorrow morning I will go and get the top soil before school and bring it home that way tomorrow night I can do another run for the next bed. Things are coming together slowly and hopefully I can get a part time job to help fund the added extras to my garden, like a fence and stepping stones. Also sorry about the comment thing in my last post but as much as I write this for me and about my day it is also nice to talk to others who may have the same interests or just enjoy reading. Since I had a few people say they enjoy my blog I will keep it as is for now, but don't be shy to leave a comment, concern, or idea every now and again :)

Sleeping in Class…..

         Okay so I’m not actually sleeping in class, but for some reason today I was so tired that trying to keep my eyes open in The History of Early Christianity was to say the least difficult. (To be quite honest I am actually writing this in class to keep awake, but don’t tell my professor!) Now I normally do not work on other things while in class, but as I said before this was the exception. So the only thing I could think about while sitting in class was my future farm. But before I begin on this I have still been wondering if I should break Iowa City law and keep chickens. As I said before this is a stupid law and I know people in the area do break it. It is my right to keep hens (no roosters! Though on my future farm roosters will be included.) to provide eggs for my family and me. I even had the idea of what I would like to keep on my property. I would love to find around 5 Dutch Bantams, but after looking last night I found that these were very difficult to find here in the states. I am looking for friendly but smaller chickens or bantams. Does anyone have any suggestions for chickens/bantams? On to my future farm though. I have been thinking about keeping both goats and cows for milk but for different products (milk to drink, to make cheese, to make soap, etc…). While doing a bit of research today I found of breed of cow that I am thinking may be a good fit for the farm, Milking Shorthorn. As for goats I was thinking that I would like to raise Nubians. I have still something other thoughts of animals that would be on the farm but no decision of precisely what I want.

            Okay I am having a serious thought about maybe making this blog private and this is my reason. I sometimes get up to 10 or more views per each entry, but no one has taken the time to comment. I do write this blog to talk about some of thoughts and my day, but I also hope for input from my readers. Why has no commented? Is there something about my blog that readers would like to see changed? If I made this blog private and no one could read it, would any of you my readers care? Please someone respond or more than someone preferably…. 

Class, Class, and more Class....

     This weekend was the winter garden fair in Cedar Rapids! I had a really good time and even Laura decided to join me. It was amazing to sit in a class listening to a woman who has been a Master Gardener here in Iowa since 1987 (I'm just lucky I picked her class as it was pretty full). I did slightly feel like the odd one out as most people attending were in their early 40s to much older. It's so sad to not see many young people interested in this kind of stuff. I am even more energized now to take additional classes and maybe even apply to the Master Gardener program. We were also given information about a program called Homegrown Lifestyle http://www.aep.iastate.edu/homegrown/brochure.pdf this course looks really amazing to me and I so much would love to be a part of it, but unfortunately I cannot afford the $179 registration fee. As it is I am just hoping that I will have the $30 to participate in  http://www.backyardabundance.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IYApYx8aQO4%3d&tabid=65 track 1. I have been trying to get a job to fund these classes but it's really hard to find something that matches my school schedule. It's to bad that I do not have some sort of skill that I could use to make even just a small sum of money. To bad I don't think I could find people to donate to the good cause of me taking these classes (ha ha that would be the day)! 

     On to another sort of class....I have a German test tomorrow and I don't feel that confidant about it. Not because it is really hard stuff yet, because it is not. Rather I have been feeling a little down lately and just the thought of school makes me sad. I love school though and this is definitely not me! Laura has said I should see a doctor, but I really do not like them. The sad thing is, school isn't even bad this semester, the classes are decently easy and I love my professors. So what gives? 

     So as I said before I think I may have failed starting my seeds this round, so I am running a seed germination test to see how they do. If they do germinate I am planning on seeding those into pots and going from there. Hopefully I will have better luck and the ones I started out with were the duds of the package. 

     Well I am going to try and keep my head and do what I can to take the classes that I want. They give me joy and tend to help. I am sure that I will at least get to the Spring Home and Garden Gala, but I doubt I will be able to pull anything together for the Homegrown Lifestyle classes. If anyone has a suggestion about how I may be able to pull off attending I would love to hear!  

    

Tired....

Sleep. Something that I feel like I desperately miss. I never know why it eludes me so much during the school semester but I wish it would just allow me to catch up. Even my dog doesn't like sleeping with me as of late because I toss and turn so much at night. Oh well, maybe one day I'll get this sleep thing figured out.

So my seeds are doing okay. I think that I may have failed though on this round of starting. I may need to plant again. I really do not like what I used to start the seeds in. I think with the next round I may use something different. I am really just hoping that maybe we can have a semi-warm day so I can set up my raised beds. I will just be happy to have the wood out of my garage but more so to actually see them set up.

 In other news, school has been going okay. The classes are easy I'm just not into I guess. I have other things I feel more passionate about at the moment and school is low on my list. I am hoping though after my all day gardening workshop this Saturday that I can refocus on school. I wish that there were other classes nearby that I could take. I would really love to take some kind of class dealing with goats. The time will come I suppose when that will happen. We also had a plumbing issue the other night and Laura is still fixing it so our upstairs toilet is out of commission which is no fun.

Short and Sweet...

So this blog post is going to be nothing profound as I've only had one little thing happen since yesterday.......My cabbage plants have sprouted!!!!!

Brunswick Cabbage

Now I am hoping that everything else takes after the cabbage and has a successful start! 

I also wanted to mention that my new favorite song that was introduced to me by Laura is "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Goyte featuring Kimbra. I think that they are both amazing singers and this is a really catchy tune!

New decisions.....

So I'm sorry about the little rant from last time and I assume that most did not appreciate it as less people viewed my blog. I also never received a single comment so I suppose I will continue to blindly talk to myself.

I started some of my seeds and I am hoping to see them sprout in the next few days. The starting of my seeds has given me a little bit of joy and excitement. I am just hoping for success. I also had to scale my garden back by two beds for now because of money but thats okay! Laura and I talked and I will build them as soon as its reasonable to do so, which may even be mid summer.

On a whole new subject, I am giving my blog readers an exclusive to something that I haven't posted on Facebook (so if you're my friend on FB don't say anything until I release the information on there....Oh yeah and same goes for G+). Laura and I are expecting a baby August 26 (of course we know it won't come on that day)! We are excited and she's been pretty sick. So with this in mind I have been thinking a lot about my future and my dreams and aspirations. Laura has already agreed with me that eventually starting a small hobby farm is a good idea and something we both dream about, but we need to be realistic too. The simple fact is, I will probably need to find a career that I can work at for a few years while we pay off debt and start our farm. Because Laura and I want to leave Iowa and have no desire to stay here I was trying to decide which career would be something that I could do almost anywhere. So I am going to try to get into the College of Nursing here at the U. I've never dreamed of being a nurse but I know that I am fully capable of doing it and who knows I may even enjoy it. There will be no news on whether I get into the College of Nursing for quite some time because I can only apply in the fall semester to begin in the spring semester and I have to do a whole bunch of prerequisite classes before even applying, so I will begin to apply to the College of Nursing in Fall 2013.

Life throws a lot at you sometimes and I must say that I am really happy about this upcoming baby. I've changed a lot and it amazes me everyday that I look at myself. If you knew me when I was younger (for those of you that didn't its probably a good thing, I wasn't that great haha) you probably knew the me that couldn't make up mind or the me that wasn't always so grateful for the things around me; but I've changed a lot and sometimes I don't even recognize this "new"(or rather the one I always kept hidden) me. I'm glad for all the crazy roads that my life has taken and while sometimes I was a little stressed and "hated" (I've really always loved it) life.

On to current school news I must say that I love my German teacher! She is totally awesome and it makes it so easy to relate to her because she is about my age. She's funny and she just doesn't only drone on about the grammar and crap in our book but she teaches us about real life stuff in Germany. She teaches us about there systems and things that would actually help if we were there. I must say though that sometimes she makes Germany sound like a very appealing place to live (of course I realize that they too have their drawbacks like anywhere). I am also happy that my advisor is going to do an independent study with me since I have been missing class trying to take care of Laura, he is a really good guy and I think that any student who takes his class and does not realize this is stupid. I really hope that the University puts him on a tenure-track because it would be unfortunate to lose him as an instructor here.

Well, thats it for now. I suppose I should shorten my entries as maybe people don't want to read something this long, but oh well its for me and I suppose that's what matters.    

I can have my own dreams...

So I wasn't going to post tonight because I didn't think I would have anything to say. But then it hit me that maybe posting about this nagging feeling from my thoughts would make me feel better and I would sleep peacefully.

To begin with I have never made the "choices" (this is in quotations because I think that everyone is who they are and we don't chose who we are we just become that person. This could be in reference to everything in life, like things we are attracted to whether it is different activities, music, books, etc; sexual orientation, dreams, or aspirations. We are simply deep down in our core an individual and we may be influenced by nature but we are overall ourselves. Now I will say that there are times in life where major "nature" events in our lives that can shift a person far from them self, but I think that it is still possibly for that person to find their true self (but it may not always happen) (You may or may not agree with this and your own philosophy is your own. I do respect that not all of us believe or have the same assumptions about life)) that were expected of me. To begin with, I'm a lesbian and its something I have always known since I was a young child, and this is something that I fought time and time again with my parents over it was a shock that they were not ready to deal with and took time to deal with. This shock pushed me far from the path that I thought I would take as a kid in high school. I had always thought and figured right after high school I would go to college like everyone else and her I was telling my parents (who were possible still having issues with something I told them after my first year of high school) that I wasn't going to college, in fact i was thinking about moving 800 miles away to continue on with really a nothing career (no offense to the Publix people, I don't think it is a nothing career. I just said that to make a point). Then after attempting to go to college while working at the nothing career I failed because I couldn't find the balance, so what did I do? I told the people around me that I was joining the Army! That would solve everything of course and I would have money for college. Which being in the military did lead me to meet Laura and I am grateful for that, I have never been one to stick to something and I always changed my mind a lot. I think that by doing this people have always treated me like a kid since kids( and supposedly only kids) cannot make up their mind. Well we know that this is wrong and adults can be like too and I think that it mostly comes from those of us who are searching for our true passions. Which really leads me to the point of the above ranting. When I told a lot people close to me I wanted to garden and that I have found my true passion of life (gardening/farming) I was met with, 'oh you don't want to do that', 'that's to hard of work', 'you don't know how to do any of that', etc.. Well here is what I have to say......I am entitled to my dreams! Do not try and tell me what to do or what I want to do. I am an adult and if things get hard and I fail at whatever I am doing, I will know that I tried my hardest doing what makes me happy and failed not because I didn't try but because I need to change my game plan. Also one may ask how do you know that this is truly what you want to do? Here is my answer....in my heart when I get to thinking about gardening or my future small farm I have burning inside of me that is so intense that it is to hard to quell with even planning. I have read more books that I would like to admit on the subjects (I am also sure the public library would like me to stop checking out 20+ books at a time and stop asking them to order books) and I have surfed the web for hours. I am signing up and have taken class and I am doing everything I can to learn about and partake in my passions and even then I want more. So if I am making a wrong choice I don't know if it would even be possible for me to be more passionate about a desire a dream.

On a whole other subject I realized that I had comments blocked which is kind of sad because every now and again it wouldn't be to bad to have a bit of feedback. With this in mind, I thought that I would pose a question to anyone who may want to answer it.....If you could have a small farm anywhere, where would it be? You don't have to include why but if you want to that would be cool. The reason I ask is Laura and I have set up a five year plan and in that five year plan we hope to be out of Iowa and are looking to move anywhere that Laura can get a job. Anyways I hear a good book and my bed calling my name so until later, goodnight.

P.S. - Sorry for the crazy rant up above I was feeling kind of mad tonight, but if you are wondering i do feel much better now.    

Winter Gardening Fair....

So tonight I took the leap and I paid for an all day gardening class. this class is an extension program through Iowa State University and I am excited! I was unable to get the original classes I wanted due to such a late sign up, but I was able to switch around a little and take everything but one of my original classes. So what did I sign up for? Organic Companion Gardening, Good Bugs/Bad Bugs, Gardening Green (this is the one I had to randomly throw in because Raised Bed Gardening was closed), Creating Habitats for backyard Wildlife, and my final class will be Creating Black Gold Compost! I am so ready for the 18th to get here so I can spend an entire day talking with others about gardening. Who knows maybe even this fall I will volunteer for the Master Gardener program and go through the classes for that.

On a completely unrelated thought, I think that I did pretty good on my first German test. So far German hasn't been so bad, but I won't go as far as saying it is easy. I actually don't mind learning it at all and I am glad that I made the decision to start. Only one more year after this of this crazy college stuff and then I can rest for awhile! Though I must admit when I sit and think about it I am kind of disappointed in myself for getting a degree in something that isn't going to get me anywhere if I need it to :( oh well there's always McDonalds! Okay so I fully hope that I never get so desperate the McDonalds looks like a viable option for me but one will never know. For now I will plan on farming and raising future children.

I also thought tonight that I would share a few links to a few blogs I read. I am sure that most of the individuals who read my blog are personal friends and only do so because they enjoy hearing me talk about my fantastic life (or maybe they are bored and I only pass the time by for them...). Anyways if you like reading about farming and just general crap here are a few that are my favorites.

http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com/ - This blog is one of my favorites and the girl who writes this blog has also written two wonderful books: Barnheart (I would really recommend this one) and Made From Scratch.

http://farm-tales.blogspot.com/ - This is another good one and she also writes books, my favorite being: Hit By A Farm

http://littlefarminthebigcity.blogspot.com/ - This is another I read quite frequently as I also enjoy it, but I will say that I check it probably every other day rather than everyday because this girl tends to be busy with homework and only has so much time for blog reading.