Crystal Madrilejos

*Update*
I wrote an slightly different post this morning but in my early morning haze, I realized that I was mixing up my sources and facts. So here is the revised (and corrected) version!

Breast milk is an amazing thing and something we may not ever fully understand because its mysteries are infinite. The properties of its makeup can be dissected and broken apart, but there is an uncountable number of connections and interactions between the properties themselves and things that we cannot see that it would be almost impossible to fully unravel. It’s a whole food that has evolved specifically for the purpose of nourishing a baby.

Just like if you took an apple and broke it apart into only the seemingly beneficial ingredients, it would never have the same nutritional impact as the whole apple itself because there are so many connections that we can’t see.

A great example that I came across that shows that we are still learning about all the benefits of breast milk was in a small section of another article I just read by Michael Pollan. He writes about how for years researchers have tried to unravel the mystery of breast milk. In their breakdown of the makeup of breastmilk, they found it contained a complex carbohydrate that babies were in fact unable to digest. Without any apparent benefit to the baby, these complex carbohydrates weren’t taken into account until recently.

Upon further research, it turns out that there is actually a very good reason for the existence of this particular property and the baby’s inability to digest it. It is a very important aspect of a baby’s development. This component was undigested by the baby so it could be a source of food for a certain type of bacteria that helps to keep the baby healthy and to promote the development of the intestinal lining.

When it comes to Nature – there are reasons for everything!

xo,
c.

P.S. And, as always, this post is coming from a point of love and support for those Mamas who are thinking about nursing, are currently breastfeeding, or have in the past and want to encourage others to give it a shot. In no way am I trying to discourage or make anyone feel bad about the decision they made/make. Either way, I SUPPORT YOU.

Intentions

I intend to accept and work with the fact that a lot of the planning that Andrew and I need to do towards our goal at the moment is research. There are items on our list that are currently not within our control or not plausible for the moment. But what we can do (something that Andrew and I used to always say) is we can get smart. We have to learn everything there is to know about what we want to achieve so that when the time comes, we can hit the ground running. I have a few items that I have on my to-do list that have to get done work-wise, but today I intend to spend at least some time just learning. Also, one if the things that I realized in last week’s intentions/reflections was that I have this tendency to view things that I really want to do as things that are “special treats” and can only devote time to them after I’ve taken care of my “responsibilities.” I love to read and I love to research things that I find valuable and interesting, things that inspire me to move towards my goals. So these things usually fall at the end of my priority list because there are always other things that “need” to be done. But in the grand scheme of things, the work that Andrew and I put towards our ultimate goals in life, are more important than most tasks that seem to take up the majority of our time. So, with that in mind, I intend to try and change my perspective in regards to things that I view as priorities and things that I view as “nice-to-haves.” Because i’m sure most of the time, I confuse the two.

Reflections

I did spend a lot of time today reading and researching. Not a ton, but more than I have in the recent past. I’ve always been an avid reader, and this is the first year of my life that I didn’t read a bunch of books. I think I managed one, maybe two? I’m currently reading “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander and his colleagues, which I’m finding to be really engaging. And also, “An Introduction to Permaculture” by Bill Mollison, who is considered the father of Permaculture. So in that regards in did have some success in sticking to my intentions today. Something I realized today is that I have a really hard time pulling myself away from work. Especially when I have a problem that needs resolving. I can’t just walk away and come back to it. I work until I feel utterly frustrated or until something else comes up that forces my attention away. Even though there is a rational side of me that knows that taking a break would be good, I just can’t seem to stop. And it was extra frustrating today because I knew that I wanted to spend some time reading and the only thing standing in my way was this one problem that I couldn’t just let be for the time being. Something I need to work on.

Past Posts
Week 2 Mantra: I Have a Plan – Day 2
Week 2 Mantra: I Have a Plan – Day 1
Mantra: Reflections on Week 1
Introduction to Creative/Life Coaching

xo,
c.

Intentions

Above: Showing Q how to jack up a pizza oven. Moving it to the barn for the winter.

Above: E being a huge help.

Above: Lunchtime. I never thought I’d see the day. Two kids, feeding themselves.

Above: Harira over brown rice. Recipe here.

Reflections 

Our gardening season is coming to an end. At least the majority of the growing part. We still have some things to harvest, but even with this crazy weather (that is causing tiny watermelons to sprout!) most of our plants are done for the season.

I thought it would be nice to focus on each variety that we decided to grow this year and give them their own posts instead of one super long post. That way, I can go into more detail about our experience.

Overall, this year has been a wonderful success that I’m going to attribute to the addition of a deer fence and raised beds. Even with our one groundhog incident, we still had a great harvest.

Acorn squash and one watermelon.

We got a good amount of acorn squash, though this was our first year growing them so I don’t have much by comparison. We grew Organic Sweet REBA (Resistant Early Bush Acorn) variety and they performed well. I didn’t realize at first that these were going to be a bush variety (despite the name!) rather than the vining type, so they got pretty crowded and huge!

Here they are as babies, nice and neat and tidy.

Here they were full size! Yikes!

I was a little worried that they weren’t getting pollinated when I noticed some of the squash were falling off before fully ripening. I did some hand pollination after some research and chalked it up to the fact that we got them into the ground really early.

Okay, I just remembered that we did have issues with chipmunks and squirrels digging things up, which resulted in this. But didn’t seem to effect the plant too much.

We haven’t eaten any yet, so I can’t vouch for taste. I did trade one for eggs with a friend and she said it was still good despite being slightly unripened. We will see as the cool weather ramps up and we get into fall cooking. Last Thanksgiving, Andrew made an acorn squash soup for our family – I think he spent like $20 on acorn squash alone. Not this year! Will post updates once we’ve opened one of these guys up.

xo,
c.

Between work, family, freelance side projects and trying to stay healthy by exercising and getting good sleep – I’m maxed out. Any free time that doesn’t involve one of those things I listed, goes to the garden, but even with a lack of free time, this year has been going surprisingly well. I’m going to attribute the success to all the work we put into it last fall! Go, us!

If you forgot, this is what our garden looked like around mid-June.

Here are some new shots of stuff in the garden:

Green Beans – I think our trellis is a bit small. Or maybe we just planted too many plants. We have a tendency to do that.

We built this so that the beans wouldn’t crawl on our deer fence. But what are they doing? Crawling on the deer fence (you can’t see it from this angle, but on the back side of the trellis the vines have started to spread to the deer fence.) Nature, you know? It will find a way!

Tomatoes are doing great this year, but our trellis/staking is dismal. What. the. Hell! Every single year, we end up looking like fools with our tomato situation. We think we have it under control, only to realize – we don’t. These things are taller than me but are falling all over the place. I don’t know why we always try to do something different when it comes to staking when there are tried and true methods for growing tomatoes. I just ended up staking them this past weekend, which is what I should have done from the start. Always trying to reinvent the wheel. Next year, we’ll get it right from the start.

My birthday gift from my Mom. A fig tree! It’s desperately in need of a larger and better-looking pot.

Butternut Squash

Cinderella Pumpkins

Strawberries, Pac Choy, Acorn Squash, Sugar Baby Watermelons and in the far distance, Tomatoes.

The side of our house that faces the garden. Not the ideal place for maximum sun exposure, but it saved us from having to fence in all four sides of the garden.

Potatoes, Kale, & Carrots

Kale

Potatoes

Pac Choy

Acorn Squash

Herbs & Amaranth

This was an offshoot of my Dad’s Thornless Blackberries that he gave us to plant.

Mini-trellis and wood stumps for bed edging.

It’s getting there! We put up the bean and pea trellis’ today after I took these photos. Will post more photos soon.

xo,
c.

Nature, you know? The vast wonders of her majestic beauty, punctuated by the biggest pains in my ass. First it was the deer, then the birds (yes, that’s bird crap in our lettuce bed but I’ve made peace with the birds, for the time being), and now chipmunks.

The birds at least have some purpose, other than pooping everywhere. They eat the bad bugs that eat our veggies. But chipmunks, what good are they? Cute, for sure. And whenever Quil sees a chipmunk running around in the backyard, he says the chipmunk is on his way “to eat pasta with grandmother.” Which he totally made up himself and is almost reason alone to pardon the creatures. But still, they are driving me crazy. They keep digging in our garden beds to hide their little nut stashes and in the process uproot any plants nearby their chosen spot. Holes like this in our potato bin:

And last night, one of those little brats knocked over one of my succulent pots on our porch and broke it. I just planted some flower seeds in another pot on our porch and they keep digging in that as well. I’m not even sure if the flowers will grow now since they’ve been disturbed so many times.

So, I did a quick little search and found that putting up a big fake owl in your garden is a common thing to do to freak those chipmunks right out. Now, that sounds all sorts of crazy. But I’m willing to try it. And I googled it and there are such things in existence for this exact purpose. I might just go all out and make my yard look like this:

There are some people on the web who say no amount of fake-owling will keep the pests out, but I’m going to give it a try since it’s cheap and requires a minimal amount of effort. Nothing worse than spending a ton of money and time on something that doesn’t work. I will let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck!
c.

What’s new on the homestead? Harvested some ramps from a friends property (pictured above – ramps as far as the eye can see), garden is underway, pond stocking is in progress, potatoes are sprouted, the reclaimed wood for the compost bin is nail free, a couple more raised beds have been built, and deer fence is almost up. Now, we just need the weather to cooperate! It’s been up and down the past couple weeks and I guess that’s why we have “last frost dates” – but man, am I itching to just get going with the warm weather already!

Today we started putting up the new deer fencing that was my gift to myself last year when I got a bonus at work. Who buys deer fence with their bonus? I do. It’s that important to me. With our past experience, it’s just not worth it to garden in our area if you don’t have either a dog or a deer fence. We don’t want a dog, so we went with the fence. I’m really, really hoping this does the trick because I love having a garden but the stress of the deer almost makes it not worth it.

I wish I had more pictures for you from the past few weeks, but I’m too lazy to upload them right now.

So here is a picture of one of our raised beds before we installed it last fall. You can see the basic construction in this photo. The outside rails are attached to four posts that will go into the ground so the bottom board sits flush on the ground.

After installing them, we put a layer of black weed blocking fabric, followed by a few layers of cardboard, a layer of leaves, a layer of alpaca manure, then another layer of leaves. This then sat for the past six months to kill the weeds and grass and also create the nutrient rich base for a layer of composted soil that went on top last week. If you can do this in the fall, it will save you a lot of work come spring (and summer, since it will save you lots of time weeding.)

Okay, so I know some of you are wondering why we used pine when it’s going to be outside and will eventually rot. Ideally, cedar would be the wood of choice since it’s naturally rot resistant. But Cedar is many dollars. We figured if we can get a few years out of these beds before they rot, it will have been worth the price we paid for the wood. I think down the line, we’re open to trying different things. We just don’t have the money for cedar ones at this point. One bed can run upwards of $200 – which is double what we paid to make ALL our beds.

We also didn’t seal the wood. And the reason being, we don’t want any toxic materials touching the soil that will be growing the food we’ll be eating. This is also the reason we didn’t use pressure treated wood, which again is rot resistant but also treated with chemicals. Here is Quil helping Andrew with the beds last fall. And by helping I mean, running around like a maniac. I just got him during a moment of stillness in this shot.

I will post more current photos of our progress soon, I promise!

xo,
c.

I posted this photo of a dish Andrew made on Instagram (come follow me!) a little while back and had some requests for the recipe. Granted, I wasn’t the one who prepared it, just the one who ate it, so I’m sort of just playing messenger here. Hopefully, one day he’ll get around to posting on here again.

Anyway! Andrew is the cook/chef/baker in our household. I know my way around a kitchen, and I do enjoy cooking. But since he is the main care-giver/stay-at-home-parent, it usually falls on him to prepare meals.

On to the recipe! You can find the original recipe on the site Cooking Quinoa and it’s pretty simple. It calls for:

• 1 ½ cups frozen edamame, cooked according to package directions
• 2 cups red cabbage, shredded
• 2 cups cooked quinoa
• 1 red pepper, seeded and diced small
• 3/4 cup diced pineapple
• ¼ cup raisins
• 2 teaspoons almonds, chopped
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil OR 2 tablespoons water + ¾ teaspoon chia seeds
• 1 teaspoon coconut palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

A couple things to note: Andrew used about half that amount of red cabbage, olive oil rather than the chia seed, and regular organic sugar instead of the coconut palm sugar.

Enjoy!
c.

These wooden acorns were made from mini-wooden eggs found at the local craft store that I stained and painted to look like the acorns the Mei collects in the film. It’s hard to see in this photo, but they have a clear coat of gloss spray on them as well. 

And a few more shots of the mini-cakes my sister made. You can see some Soot Sprites peeking out here and there. For these, we bought black pompoms and stick-on googly eyes. They were so simple, my 4-year-old niece was able to make them. We had her churning out Soot Sprites at maximum speed! The little pink, orange and aqua flowers are from the dollar aisle in Target. They came as long ribbons, but I just snipped a few strands apart and sprinkled them around. They actually reminded me of the candy the Soot Sprites eat in Spirited Away.