Changing of the Guard

A weekend full of sewing has produced a new set of diapers for Rowen. 4 fitted diapers with 6 lay in soaker pads. These will replace the smaller fitted diapers that my mother and I made this spring.

For those of you tuning in who might be interested in such details, here they are. This is the MamaBird pattern, (free off the internet) slightly modified and in a size "Big." I used bamboo velour for the body of the diaper with 3/8" elastic for the legs and back. I used Touch Tape hook and loop for closures, box stitching them on for more strength, and adding laundry tabs. The lay-in soakers are another free pattern found online. I used microfleece for the outer layer and organic hemp terry cloth inside. The microfleece is a wicking cloth, moisture gets pulled down into the terry cloth, leaving a dry feeling for baby's bum. I went with the lay-in soakers because my only complaint about the initial batch of diapers was how long they took to dry. This way the body dries separately from the soakers and everything should dry much quicker.

The first couple of diapers have been tried with much success. Dave did say that he found it hard to deal with the lay-ins while Rowen is squirmy. :-P Of course now with these in rotation I desperately need to finish more medium diaper covers. C'est la vie.
Here's Rowen helping me put away the laundry. He's crawling on two of his wetbags, two of his medium covers are behind him and a stack of momma pads are in front of him. That makes everything in the picture made by me. hahaha

Blizzard!

Well winter weather has blown in with a vengeance this week. We had 6 inches of snow fall last night, so everyone is taking a snow day. Bitterly cold and windy, drifts of up to a couple of feet are expected for the rest of this week. All this means my gardening season is officially over for the year. Below is a picture I snapped in November, the arugula to the left, and the kale on the right.


I harvested the kale patch this weekend, probably a couple pounds of kale. It had been through some pretty hard freezes so I don't think it'll be good to dry, I'm going to have to cook it. Probably either a soup or just as sauteed greens.


That last harvest puts me technically at the 10 month mark for produce production. :-) (My first harvest was spinach in March) That's a personal best for me. We have a lot of produce stored and preserved, either dried or canned. I hope to get an inventory this week so I have a good idea of just how much we have of everything.


Some interesting ideas I stumbled across about window farming in urban areas:


The next time I'm living somewhere with windows, I'm totally going to try this out. I could grow herbs, lettuces, peas and maybe sprouts. Looks fun in any case. :-)

Fall harvests

Well, first week in November, and I wanted to brag on my fall gardening successes.

The bed of greens I planted late summer is really going great. We have a grocery bag full of arugula/spinach/kale and lots more in the garden.

I got a handful of green onions, from a neighbor who had misplanted onion seeds. And a handful of green sage, which is very hardy up here in zone 4.

I harvested the last of the cabbage and made a delicious cole-slaw with a kohlrabi and a carrot. Lastly, I was raking the potato bed, putting things to bed for winter, and I raked out 3 more pounds of potatoes that I had missed during my initial harvest.

Woohoo!

Anthropology geek out for a minute

Oh my goodness that is cool. I'm thinking spring break 2012. :-D

handmade baby continues to grow

I've got 3 new prefold diapers made! Soft bamboo velour with soaker pads made of hemp terry cloth. They fit him great and will replace some really thin ones that I've been dying to get out of the rotation. They have plenty of room still around the legs and I had to fold them down a couple of inches, so he has growing room in these.


You can see one of my handmade covers under his bum waiting to be fastened. :-D

I've read the Republican Health Care bills

That's right, your favorite little hippy has read the bicameral 130-page “Patients Choice Act of 2009," Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) “Health Care Freedom Plan,” And Rep. Tom Price's (R-Ga.) “Empowering Patients First Act,” a 130-page plan, HR 3400.

Some of you may be asking, why on Earth would you do that? Well, I've been debating politics with my elders the past couple of days. And the majority of the elders in my family are Republicans. I mentioned that I hadn't heard about any legislation from the Republicans on the whole Health Care debate My father promptly informed me that the Liberal media have studiously avoided reporting on them, thus giving cover for Obama to make the claim that the Republicans had offered no alternative. He sent me a link that had names for three of the bills, I searched the Government Printing Office's website and found the actual bills the congress-people are working with. Since I'm on extended maternity leave/unemployment and really lacking in cerebral stimulation right now, I actually read the bills. :-D

I thought to myself, self, perhaps there are other people who are curious about what's in those bills. Maybe they saw the republicans waving them during Obama's address, and wonder what they say.

None of them, in my opinion, address the root issues the system faces, some of them have sections detailing that abortions can't be had with gov't money. I was tired of hearing the republicans rant against abortion by the end of Bush's first term, I'm certainly in no mood to listen to it now that the dem's have control. :-P Here's my take on the three most popular GOP bills, put forward as alternatives to the Dem's reform legislation.

I read Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) “Health Care Freedom Plan", and all it entailed was a tax credit up to 5000$ per family for eligible health insurance spending, and a section trying to fix the liability problems. I think it was trying to limit the amounts people could sue for, I kinda got bogged down in the legalese. While fixing the liability issues facing doctors is certainly important, and I wish the dem's would do something about that issue, the main section of the plan, the tax credit, does very little to help those American's who don't have health insurance. It also doesn't seem like it helps American's, it just seems to shunt money into the hands of big insurance companies, telling them to go about business as usual, with no motivations for reducing costs or increasing efficiency.

“Patients Choice Act of 2009.” appears to be just Medicare legislation. In fact the whole title is Empowering Medicare Patients Choice Act. The purpose: "To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for the establishment of shared decision making standards and requirements and to establish a pilot program for the implementation of shared decision making under the Medicare program."
That hardly seems earth moving to me, but I know the GOP depends on the scared old white people vote, so they have to go with their strengths. :-D Although "shared decision making" does sound an awful lot like Death Panels to me. :-D

“Empowering Patients First Act,” is more of the tax credits and abortion limitations. Nothing to help fix the rising health care costs and decreasing satisfaction that excludes so many Americans from health care.

These don't seem like anything I'd waste time talking about in the middle of a debate on health care reform, and I'm not even a Dem. They seem like bandaids, salves that pretend to help Americans but in reality just send more tax payer dollars to big insurers. Although, that one section dealing with the liability issue, that is worthwhile in my mind. That's an actual problem forcing lots of dr's out of practice because they can't afford malpractice insurance. I hope that bit of legislation eventually sees the light of day, but who knows.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the under-reported GOP bills.

Still learning

Well, fall is officially here. The days are now shorter than the nights, and we had our first brush with frost last night. I visited all my garden plots yesterday to square things away for the potential frost. I picked the last of the purple green beans, covered the row of fall greens with some row cover, and generally made sure things were squared away. My fall greens are really going gang busters! I got a handful of arugula, kale and spinach for a little salad yesterday. I'll have 4 butternut squashes and 1 last cabbage head to harvest in October. My fridge is stuffed with carrots and kohlrabi and green beans, I have a box full of onions and garlic, and I've got a few tomatoes on the counter still. Not too shabby.

This summer really flew by. I don't know if it was Baby, or being jobless, or the cool weather, or what, but I just don't remember a summer going by this fast before. I learned a lot though, and did things that I've never done before. My first try at pickling went really well, despite the lack of cucumbers. :-) That zucchini relish has been a hit with everyone who's tried it. The potato trial went well. I'll fix the last of those potatoes this week probably. I still need to figure out how to grow more and have enough to eat on for more than a month plus enough to plant out next spring. But, baby steps. :-) My spring planted garlic turned out surprisingly well, with full heads on all of them, and no difference in taste that I can tell. I made some grape juice with my mother this weekend from a friends grapes that were about to ferment on the vine, and that was a first. It's pretty tasty, and I'll definitely do it again if I get the opportunity. I canned corn and carrots this year, both a first for me, and I doubled the amount of tomatoes I canned. I actually ate my kohlrabi and cabbage this year, another first. I don't know about anyone else, but I have this weird thing where the first year I grow something, i.e. kohlrabi, I'll grow a small bit of it, harvest it, and then watch it decompose in the fridge. Maybe try it cooked in one dish, but half the time I mess that up so bad it just ends up in the trash. The second year I'll actually grow enough of the veggie that I'll have a good batch to work with and I'll try lots of things, and then it actually gets eaten. Maybe that's normal omnivore behavior, I don't know, but it's something to think about. Yea, I knew how to deal with a bushel of tomatoes and I had experience with bags of green beans and okra. However, learning dishes to do with 2 dozen kohlrabi bulbs that wouldn't upset my husband and young child was a whole 'nother level. I'm really glad I started my gardening before I found myself unemployed with a small child and trying to actually feed my family with the produce.

Farmers markets will be closing soon in the northern half of the country, make sure you stock up on your favorite goodies. :-)