Challenge Update

I've really sucked at this eat local challenge lately. I didn't do enough research ahead of time and with the hustle and bustle of the holidays on top of a very busy month at work I just havent put together any complete meals with local ingredients. We have been trying to eat local items so now I just need to buckle down and make the effort to get a complete meal done.

My Christmas garden was a success. Even with very cold temperatures and multiple frost/freezes we were able to heat a huge salad with homegrown lettuce and spinach which made me a very happy woman. I did leave some leaves for the next few weeks, but the rest are going to need some time to get big enough for cutting. The lettuce and spinach is growing slowly, but it is growing which proves that with a cheaply built hoop frame you can grow successful year round in Oregon.

I better get back to work. Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful New Years.

See you next year!

Griswold Family Christmas

I have always loved the movieNational Lampoons Christmas Vaction. The first Christmas my husband and I were together he gave it to me as a gift and we started the tradition of watching the movie every Christmas Eve in bed.

Last year we decided at the last minute to come up to Eugene for Thanksgiving weekend on a scouting mission. At this point we were doing everything we could to get up here and we wanted to decide on the area of town that we would want to look for a rental as we knew that we probably would have to do everything remotely when moving became a reality. While we were here we decided to get our Christmas tree. We saw a story on the news about paying 5 bucks for a permit to cut a tree in the National Forest, Griswold Family style. We decided to just cut a tree down at a family farm, by the way the best tree I have ever had. We did vow that if we were able to move up here that we would go into the forest for our tree.

Well, we are here and we made it into the forest for our tree. At 5 bucks a piece I rationalized that we should get three tree's and we would still only be paying half of what one tree from a farm would cost us. The best part about three tree's is that everyone got to pick out the tree they wanted, instead of searching for hours for the best tree that we both liked.



Here is my son posing with the tree that he picked out for his ornaments. He has a pretty big collection of the Dr. Seuss and Scooby Doo ornaments from Hallmark so it will be nice to have them displayed on his own tree.



Here is a picture of the tree I picked out for the front yard, it caught my eye because it has two trunks that connected at the base of the tree. I will post a picture of it when we get it completed, it will have white lights with red and silver ornaments that I have from when I used to have a stair banister to decorate.




This is a picture of the main tree for the house that my husband picked out. As you can see his measuring skills are off and the tree had to be taken back outside to get chopped down a bit. Since Ethan's ornaments were going on his tree and I had a tree to decorate outside I told my husband that he could have his own Star Wars tree. His mom and grandmother have been buying him the Hallmark Star Wars ornaments every year for probably the last 15 years. He has so many that normally he only gets to display half of them, but this year that is changing. And just to be clear, I have never seen any of the Star Wars movies and really don't have any interest to so I'm a pretty good wife to let the main tree be decorated this way.

We had such a fun family day. Ethan and Doja had a blast running in the snow and we just enjoyed a family day that didn't involve chores or errands. This is definately a family tradition that we will continue to do each year.

I Must Be Crazy!

UPDATE: I found a company in our area that is sorta like a CSA. They have a website where you can order all sorts of different products from local farms within 50 miles of here. If I place my order by Monday morning it will be dropped off at the local brewery on Tuesday afternoon's. This is a win-win situation. I can get all of the local products that I need for the Dark Day's Challenge and I can have a beer while I pick up box of goodies. The local farms participating offer: meat, dairy, grains, veggies, fruits, honey, and other non-perishable items. I've placed an order for pickup tomorrow so once I get my box I will post some photo's of the yummy stuff we ordered. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that all of the items that are offered are either cheaper or the same price as what I would pay for it at the farmer's market or the local grocery chain.

I signed up for the Dark Days Challenge over at Not Dabbling in Normal. I always love a challenge but maybe I should have done some research before signing up. I have only lived in this State for 6 months and I have no idea what I am going to be able to come up with for meals with all ingredients from within 100-150 miles of my house.

At first I thought I was set. I have been to Bob's Red Mill in Portland and I knew that was within my mile range so I figured I was set in regards to flour and baking products, WRONG. The mill may be within my mile range, but I never thought about the fact that the grains probably didn't fall into that category. I guess it is time to start investigating because I have recently started making all of our bread products and finding a local source for flour would be nice.

We do have a winter market so I will have to go this week to check out what is available. I don't have a winter vegetable loving family so I am going to have to get creative. I do have three of my garden beds planted in winter lettuce and spinach, but I was really hoping to save most of that for a big home grown salad for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately with the prospect of having to move I delayed putting in the garden beds so the growth is rather slow, but they are growing.

If any of you live in my area and know of local meat and dairy sources please let me know, I would appreciate any help I can get.

Wish me luck. Worst case is we will be eating a plain spinach salad once a week, probably not a bad idea for the waistline that has grown since we got here.

Time Flies

I can't believe how long it has been since I posted. Quite a bit has changed in the last few months. I started working in September when my son went back to school. I'm extremely lucky that I was able to get a job working from home, so I have a very short commute and I get to work in my pajama's. The downside is that I spend all day on a computer so when work is done for the day the last thing I want to do is play on the computer.

The summer garden was pretty disappointing, but it was still nice to be able to pick produce from the backyard. I put in a winter garden for the sole purpose of having a homegrown salad for Christmas dinner. I have three beds that are filled with spinach and winter lettuce that are protected by a poly tunnel, the growth is slow but I will be able to eat my own lettuce in December. We have had frost and very cold temperatures and I am amazed at how warm it gets under the tunnel.

Last month we were notified that we are going to have to move. We have been paying our rent, but unfortunately the landlord hasn't been paying their mortgage. We are still unsure of how long we have, but I do know this: I DON'T WANT TO MOVE. We finally got this house unpacked and pictures on the wall a few months ago. I feel like if we have to move we will be starting all over again with new friends and a new neighborhood, something that I don't want to do. We have talked about building a house on one of the empty lots in the neighborhood, but if we do that it will be a long time before I get my hobby farm. We have some decisions to make and we probably need to make them pretty quick.

That's enough updates for now, I'll try and get on here more regularly.

Happy Thanksgiving

Challenge Update

What a week!! I did just over 75 miles for the challenge. It is now been over a week and a half since I drove my car, kind of weird. My legs are tired so we took it easy yesterday and stayed home. I was able to get a bunch of weeding done and we may just do the same today. It has been pretty warm so I would rather stay home and play in the pool than drag a 60 pound sled in almost 90 degree heat. I'm going to continue to ride the bike while the weather is still nice.

My son starts school in two weeks so it is time for me to get a job. I think my mother-in-law is going to be able to get me a job working from home, which would be fantastic. If this goes through I think I may try and commute my son to school one way each day. A good 14 mile bike ride every day will be good for getting rid of the beer gut that has grown since we arrived here in Oregon.

I should be picking the first tomatoes today which is very exciting, although it is pretty late in the season already. I think I may make some bruschetta tonight for dinner. It looks like I will have a bunch of tomatoes all ready at the same time which should be good because I am ready to start canning. I am going to see if we can go pick some blackberries tonight so I can make some jam. We still have enough strawberry jam from the batch I made in March to get us through until next year, but I would like the ability to have some variety. I'm also thinking of making some blackberry syrup to have for pancakes. Since blackberries grow like weeds here I am going to try and put up quite a bit of fruit. I know it sounds crazy that I made jam in March, but please remember that most things grow year round in California.

I'm off to go pick weeds, have a wonderful day.

Bike Challenge

I've been experiencing some pain in my left knee for quite awhile now and I finally went to the Dr. two weeks ago. The Dr. was very laid back and couldn't really tell me what was wrong. He said he wanted to send me to physical therapy to have them really beat my knee up so we could pinpoint the problem. The problem with this approach was that my knee was already causing me pain and interrupting my sleep so the last thing I wanted to do was have someone cause me more pain. I had already scheduled an appointment with a different Dr., but they couldn't see me for a week so I had also made this appointment. After the first visit I decided to keep the second appointment and get another opinion. This orthopedic office was amazing. You can tell that there are quite a bit of sports injuries in this town with how big and busy the place was. I'm really glad I kept that appointment. Before I even saw the Dr. they took me in for X-Rays so that could instantly rule some things out. Basically I have runner's knee, the Dr. took out 15cc's of fluid and gave me a cortisone shot.

It took a few days for the cortisone to kick in, but now that it has I decided it was time to start the bike challenge. We went camping over the weekend and took a 6 mile ride to the lake for a picinic lunch. After driving home from camping on Sunday I have not gotten into a car. We decided to get Pizza for dinner on sunday and I rode my bike to the pizza shop a mile away to pick it up instead of having it delivered. On Monday my son and I took the bike over to Fred Meyer to pick up a few essentials. This was my first trip on the bike trail through town and it was quite nice. The ride ended up being just under 9 miles and even though I was pulling a close to 70 pound trailer behind me, it didn't seem that bad. Tuesday was Donut day. I had been promising my son to take him to Voodoo Donut's in downtown on the bike. I invited one of the neighbors and her daughter with us and we made it a morning of donuts and farmer's market. The trip was just over 14 miles and I was ready for a nap when we got home.

I picked up some plums at the farmer's market that were so good I have asked my husband to ride with me on Saturday morning to go get some more.

So far I am at 25 miles since Sunday. With the 14 mile ride on Saturday to the market and a possible 12 mile ride to the fair on Sunday I should top out at over 50 miles for the week which is pretty good considering I am pulling a 50 pound sled behind me without adding anything else that we may purchase.

I think that I will continue this challenge past the end of this week. I have found that it is not that difficult to get to downtown or anywhere else that we usually go. The downside is the weight and storage capacity of the trailer. I think that once a week I will use the car to get the heavy items at the store, but will save the light items for trips during the week. My son enjoys going on rides and they help us get out of the house for awhile to enjoy the beautiful days that we are having. I can feel fall in the air and now that it won't be long before the rains begin so we need to enjoy it while we can.

Check These Out

I just picked these to have with our salad tonight. I have only ever grown really stubby carrots so I am beyond excited about these. These grew in the small holes of the cinder blocks so they had about two feet of nice soft soil for growing, I guess that makes a difference. These measured out at 15 inches. I can't wait to see how big the rest of them have gotten.

Challenge

With my current role as a stay at home mom I don't feel challenged. I love being at home, but I feel that something is missing.

We live in a very friendly bike town. We have trails within a minute from our house that will take us throughout the city. My son loves to ride his bike, but he is slow and can't ride far distances. I have been looking into different options that would allow us to ride bikes as a family farther than the mile or so that we go now. My first thought was to get one of the trail-a-bikes that hook up to the back of my bike. This would require Ethan to peddle and I know that after awhile he would hate getting on it. The next option was to get a bike trailer. Burley trailers are made here in Eugene and I have heard are the best one's to get,unfortunately they are very expensive. I have been looking on craigslist and eBay and used ones are well over $200.

Yesterday I decided to call play it again sports to see if they had any used one's in stock. They said they had one that was $100 and I had them put it on hold. I should have known it was too good to be true. This trailer was well over 10 years old and had mildew spots all of the fabric. If I was just using this to transport items it wouldn't be such a big deal, but I was not putting my son in that thing.

I did what I should have done months ago, I bought this.



I went out and bought the low end model for $250. The main difference between this one and the next step up was the handlebar to make it a stroller. We had the BOB stroller, the Cadillac of strollers and our son wouldn't sit it in past 2 so we do not need this option. I didn't want to buy a new one before because with my son being four he will probably only sit in this for another year. After spending months trying to get a used one for $200 it just didn't make sense to wait for a used one when I only had to spend a little more for a brand new one with no other kids boogers on it. Also, the market for these is so high that we should be able to recoup a good portion of the cost if we decide to sell it.

So now for the challenge. I have decided that next week I will not drive my car. Everywhere that I need to go will have to be done with the bike and trailer. I would like to do this challenge for a longer period of time, but first I want to test the waters and see if this is something that I could actually do full time. I will only ride in a car if we are going on a family outing and I can't get my husband to take his bike. I will keep track of the miles traveled each day and the errands that we run and whether the trip is feasible on a bike. I know that I won't be able to do a full grocery trip, but the garden is producing so we shouldn't need much anyways.

Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it.

Back to Reality

I try to get together with my college girlfriends at least once a year. Since they live on the East Coast the get together usually involves me having to fly across the Country to see them. Our friend Erica was the last one to turn thirty in the group so we decided a girl's trip to Las Vegas was in order. Since the trip was planned for the day after my mother-in-laws birthday I decided that we needed to fly in early to surprise her for her birthday. It is very hard to keep secrets from this woman and all she did for two weeks was complain about the fact that her husband would not let her fly up to Oregon for her birthday. Let's just say she was very excited to see us in her house when she arrived home from running errands. Our son stayed with my parents while I was in Las Vegas and my in-laws decided to keep him for an extra week and will be bringing him back next weekend. It is very weird being in the house without him. I have started a huge to do list so that I can try and be as productive as possible with our free time.

The garden doesn't need that much attention at the moment. The three tomato plants have a ton of fruit, but everything is still green. The last of the onions are falling over so I will pull those out and get a planting of lettuce and carrots for the fall in their place. It looks like the raspberries we planted this year are going to have a small fall crop, we are very excited about the prospects of a few raspberries for the ice cream bowl. There are three pumpkins on the vine and the melons are just now starting to flower since the weather has finally warmed up.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks there will be enough ripe tomatoes so I can start canning some sauce. This may sound crazy to most of you, but I don't really enjoy a plain tomato. I really only eat fresh tomatoes in bruschetta and salsa. We make homemade pizza quite often and I always find that I open a jar of sauce, use about a cup and then the rest just sits in the back of the fridge until it is bad. I am going to can the sauce in half pint jars so that we always have the perfect amount without any waste.

I better get started on my list. Today is supposed to be a beautiful day and if I work fast enough I can enjoy some time floating in the pool this afternoon.

Irresponsibility Night

About a month ago we met a few families that live around the corner from us that have little boys for Ethan to play with. Every Friday night they hold what they call irresponsibility night. The kids play on the trampoline, ride their bikes and just play like kids should. The adults play corn hole while sipping on a cold beer. By the way, this game is very addicting and an easy DIY project. The kids and adults have so much fun that we usually don't end up walking home until close to midnight.

We really like the neighborhood that we live in and it is making me start to adjust my long term goals. I grew up in a typical neighborhood where the kids played all day and only headed home because it was time for dinner. Once dinner was finished we played until the street lights came on. As much as I want my farm, I realize all of the things that we will have to give up in order to have it. We enjoy camping and ATV riding, and I am realizing that we would have to give a lot of that up if we were to have livestock to take care of. I also like that Ethan will be able to play with other kids all the time, not just when it is convenient for the parents to get them together.

I have a new plan. I would like to buy a house in the neighborhood that we are currently living in. This neighborhood was brand new in 2006, and there are still a few empty lots where you can get a brand new house for not a ton of money. We could pay the mortgage, taxes and insurance and be saving money over what we are paying in rent here. After buying a house, I would like to save some money to purchase an acre or two within a ten minute drive of our house. I am going to forgo the livestock, but I would like a little property where I can have a huge vegetable garden. It could also be a place to hold big BB Q's and camp outs for friends and family.

Time to start making this plan a reality.

Farmer's Markets

I first starting going to farmer's markets when it was time for my son to start eating solid foods. I had decided that I was going to make all of his food and I liked being able to get our weekly produce all in one trip. Farmer's markets in California have an advantage over other areas, the growing season is quite long so the markets run year round. I could go to farmer's markets and get my weekly produce for less than it would cost me to go to the grocery store.

The farmer's market opened in Eugene the weekend that we arrived. I couldn't wait to go because I had heard that this market was quite large and was a popular destination on Saturday mornings. There are two things that really disappoint me about this market, the prices are quite expensive and there are way too many food vendors and not enough farm stands. I know that the food vendors attract people to the market, but I would prefer if there were lots of vendors of vegetables/fruits to choose from. I ended up spending $5 for a dozen eggs and $4 for a loaf of bread, insane!!

As the summer progresses I am going to try and go to a few of the other local markets to see if I can find one that caters to fresh produce. If not, I will definitely be expanding the garden next year so that I won't be needing anything from the market. A lady at my husband's work has chickens and she sells her eggs for $2 a dozen. We now receive a dozen a week so that is one less thing needed from the market.

I sure do miss talking to the farmers though.

Disappointed

There were some brown spots developing on my potato patch. I tried researching the spots to see what was causing them but couldn't find anything. Take a look at this picture, do you know what this is?



Since I didn't know the cause I decided that it was time to just harvest all of the spuds. It was kind of a disappointing harvest, but I do love fresh spuds. I know that most people just leave this as a vegetable to buy at the grocery store because of the space and cost. I bought one pound of seed potatoes from Territorial for around 4 bucks and harvested about 2 1/2 pounds. The way I look at it is that I couldn't have gotten this amount of fresh spuds for the same price. I do have to say that I have usually had great results just using organic potatoes that sat on the counter too long.




The big dissapointment is from the pea patch. I harvested all of the snap peas from my son's bed and the shelling Dakota peas from another bed. The snap peas were still flowering but I don't have a ton of recipes to use them with and my husband will surely love the carrots that I am going to plant in their place. The Dakota peas are super yummy, but they just didn't put out like I had hoped and they weren't flowering anymore. Some plants had 6-8 pods and others only had one or two on them. For the amount of peas I planted I only ended up getting 2.25 pounds. A success in that I love just going out to the garden and picking a few for a snack, but I have realized that if I want any to make it into the freezer that I would really need to devote a lot more space that I just don't have. I will try and plant some in early August and see if I can get another crop before the rains arrive.

When I first put the garden beds in I told my husband that I had a goal of harvesting two hundred pounds from the garden. At this point it doesn't look like I will hit that goal, but I have come to the conclusion that anything we harvest is better than getting it at the store or the farmer's market. A story about the Farmer's Market to come later.

We Took To The Woods

I just finished reading We Took To The Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has a desire to live the simple life. The book was written 70 years ago, but I would live this way in a heartbeat if I ever had the chance.

I would love to have a small house in the woods without all of the major conveniences that living in the city allow for. My husband on the other hand could probably only go a couple of days living like this. I will eventually get my little farm in the country, but there will be compromises to ensure that both of us are happy.

Would you want to live this way, or do you prefer the conveniences of city life?

It Must Be Summer

Everything in the garden is loving the warm weather we have been having. I was finally able to pick an entire bowl of strawberries, something that has never happened before. The strawberry plants that we brought from California are producing some very large sweet berries, yummy!!

I also picked a bunch of snap peas from my son's garden. I think I will remove the pea plants from his garden later this week and add some grean beans, something everyone in the family loves.

We are off to go pick some blueberries and take Ethan to his first movie at the theater, it should be a great day.

Slim Pickings

The weather is finally warming up enough around here that things are really starting to take off in the garden.





The strawberries and peas only lasted long enough to get photographed and weighed. The lettuce became big salads for dinner, super yummy with fresh picked lettuce.

Totals so far for June:

Lettuce: 1 lb, 4 ounces
Strawberries: 6
Peas: 2 Ounces

We should have a quite a few peas ready for picking later this week. There is a ton of lettuce ready so we will need to start eating salads everyday or giving some away to the neighbors. Everything else is growing pretty slowly in the cool temperatures that we have been having.

The Kitchen

I am making my father in-law a calendar for his birthday. As I was going through my camera card this morning I looked at all of the pictures from our going away party that we had before we left.



Why is the kitchen always the place to congregate? Boy do I miss my old kitchen. Hopefully I will get the chance to do it again some day.

Finally!

We have our first Pea!! We have harvested a few things so far, but I always look forward to the first harvest of peas. The peas that we planted last year never made it into the house. My husband and I would just stand by the bush plucking them off and straight into our mouths. I put in quite a large crop so hopefully some will make it into the freezer this year.

What harvest do you look forward to?

Home

It is so good to be home. I had a fabulous time at my cousin's wedding in my hometown and at the river visiting with family and friends, but I have no desire to return to Southern California. Now that I am back I am ready to make this house of ours into a home. I know that this is not a permanent location, but we will be here until we figure out what the rest of the future holds for us. People are very friendly and we are starting to make some good friendships with some of the neighbors, enough that we have had a few of them over for dinner.

With all that being said, I think my husband is a little homesick. He has never lived anywhere but Orange County and that is where he built his life. Leaving him here alone for three weeks after only being here for a month in a half was probably not the right thing to do. The weather sucked the entire time I was gone, which made him sort of depressed and he was also without anyone that he really knows around. If I had left that long back home it wouldn't have been a big deal because he would have had familiar faces around. I'm hoping that now that we are home and the weather is nice that maybe things will change. If not, I have already told him that I do not want to go back. Maybe he will go to Vermont and change the rain to snow, although that would mean giving up the Lakers and Angels on TV and I don't know if he will ever let that happen.

Now to the garden update.








As you can see everything seems to be doing pretty well. It has been so rainy here that everything is about three weeks behind schedule. It is sad that my peas were bigger in CA in March then they are here in June. I am currently growing popcorn but would love to put in some sweet corn. Does anyone know if they were planted close would they cross pollinate? I picked my first garlic today and it is small, but smells delicious. We have had a few salads with our greens and they were both delicious, I can't wait to be able to have a salad with toppings from the yard. I have been pulling a few of the onions from the yard for my salads, but they are really starting to bulb out so now I will just have to wait until they are ready to harvest. I like my green onions to be pretty skinny and feel that once they get any bigger it is worth the wait to see them as big onions, I love them and use about 15 pounds a month.

So far the totals for June:

Lettuce (Spinach, Looseleaf and Butterhead): 1 Pound
Garlic: 1/4 pound
Alisa Craig Onions: 1/8 pound
Strawberries: 2

Yesterday was supposed to be sunny and it was, but then we got almost an inch of rain. The forecast had only stated a 10% chance of any rain. Hopefully this week we should have some better weather so my garden can start producing. In my next life I am going to be a meteorologist. It is the only profession where you can be wrong 90% of the time and still have a job :)

2010 Garden

I have always loved getting seed catalogs even though I never had the garden space to order from them. Being twenty minutes from Territorial Seed has been awesome and I have already made two trips there. This year in the garden will be the following:

San Marzano Tomato
Austrian Crescent Potatoes
Calico Popcorn
Dakota Peas
Alisa Craig Onions
Globe Artichokes
Small Sugar Pumpkins
Jade Bush Beans
Tigger Melon
Regatta Spinach
Sugarsnax Carrots
Victoria Butterhead
Prado Red Sunflowers
Cherry Rose Sunflowers
Strawberries
Raspberries



My mother in law gave me a beautiful antique scale from the early 1900's when she visited last month. They have had one hanging in their laundry room for years and I have always admired it. I am going to use this to weigh everything we produce so I can get an idea of what this garden provides for our family.



My son and I had a wonderful time putting in the garden and he has his own garden to take care of. He filled it with soil and planted everything with very little help from me. He knows that he is in charge of watering and weeding and he has been very good about checking it everyday.

I will try and get some pictures this week of the completed garden. I can't wait until August when all of the beds are full and beautiful, overflowing with ripening fruit.

Living the Dream

I asked for an adventure and I got one. We arrived in Eugene last Wednesday and drove straight to our rental property. What a dump!! I could live with the fact that all of the rooms were so small that we would have been bed shopping for three twin beds and all sleeping in separate rooms. I could have lived with the fact that the house was extremely old and that it had character. I could not live with the fact that the house was so dirty that there is not enough Pine Sol and Bleach in the entire country that could get that house clean. My husband said it best when he said the only way to get that house clean would be to use a wrecking ball. The house still had the couch on the front porch, which made me laugh when we saw the pictures, but I assumed that it would be gone by the time we got there. We broke the lease that night and went to a hotel. The only thing that mad me sad about that house was that I was losing my urban farm on a 1/4 of an acre two blocks from downtown, but not sad enough that I wanted to move in.

We went and looked at rentals the next day and ended up in a newer development on the West side of town. The houses are six years old and it seems that almost all of the houses have kids in all age ranges. I am still in the process of unpacking as the first POD showed up on Tuesday and the other one yesterday. This process has made me realize that we have way too much stuff and we need to start downsizing it. I have a new household rule, if something new comes in the house something old will have to leave.

We went and looked at chickens last weekend and we will be getting them when I get back from our trip down south in June. I have already been looking at coop designs and once we settle on one that works for our yard my husband will start building it. The garden planning is underway. I started some pepper, romaine and pea seeds on Monday and the only seeds that haven't germinated are the peppers. I bought a little Burpee greenhouse for the counter and it seems to work quite well. I am learning that I am in a completely different gardening zone than I am used to. My peas that I planted in January were four feet tall and starting to flower before we left, I left them for our renter to enjoy. It is still too cold here that people are just starting to plant seeds inside. I had already picked a couple of blueberries from our bushes before we left California. They all made the trip here in my car, but I am afraid that the rest of the fruit may suffer from the cold before they have time to mature.




Here is a new picture of the garden. My husband has stated that I can't start working on the garden beds until I have the whole house unpacked. I will be working night and day because I am very excited to get going. I layed down the boxes to try and kill the grass and weeds. We are going to build raised beds along the fence line and hopefully if I can score some free windows we will turn a couple of the beds into cold frames. Territorial Seed's headquarters is 20 minutes from here and my son and I have a date next week to go pick out our seeds.

Oregon

Let me just set the record straight, I LOVE VERMONT!!! After spending four years there in college my parents made me come back to Southern California since I planned on continueing my education and it was much cheaper to be here. After spending two months here I decided that this was not the place for me and I planned my move back to Vermont. Well, I met my husband two weeks before I planned to leave and let's just say I never left.
My husband has no desire to move to Vermont which just breaks my heart. So instead of always dreaming of getting there we decided that we would try to move somewhere else on the west coast. He tries to deny it, but his Laker's and Angel's would come on way too late at night if we lived on the East Coast. We talked about Northern California, but the places where we could get jobs just put us back into the mix of the things we hated about here. We talked about Colorado, but we don't know anyone there and once again, the places where my husband could get a job had the same issues as here. Then we started talking about Oregon, where my husband has some family.
We took a trip to Oregon to go snowboarding with my husband's cousin in Bend. We fell in love with the beauty of the area and the fact that they get snow, something that is on my dream list. We also went to Eugene to visit and we liked it, but Bend was the place to be. I flew out to go to a teacher's conference to try and get a job, which I could have had my husband been able to find anything. This is around the same time as the economy crashed and housing went to the dump in Bend.

Flash forward two years and we decided to once again try and make it out of here. My son will be starting school in a year and we figured this was the best opportunity to try and make this work. My husband quit his job at the company he had worked at for 17 years. With job prospects not very good in Southern California he started pushing for jobs in Eugene. A wonderful company called him for a second interview and paid to have him flown up there for a six hour interview. Last week they called to let him know the job is his and tomorow we will find out when he needs to report.

We have a prospective renter coming over today and we have sent out a few emails on houses that we are interested in renting up there. It feels so wierd to try for something for two years and then all of a sudden everything is happening so quick.

I am so excited for this new adventure in our lives to start.

It is official, we are moving to Oregon!!

Country State of Mind

With the goal of moving to Oregon becoming a reality, I have found my mind wandering into a state of Country. I'm listening to country music again, something I haven't done in over ten years; I'm teaching myself to knit so I can become more self sufficient; and I feel like eliminating things in my life that are not fulfilling.

I'm in love with the thought of going to Oregon because I feel like I am going to finally be living the life I dream about. I want to live in a small house with a gigantic yard. I want to grow ninety percent of our food and make a lot of our clothes.

Today it is supposed to be 75 here. Am I the only one that gets depressed in Southern California when we go a couple of weeks with warm weather and no rain? My son spent the night at Grandma's last night so before we go rescue him it is off to go get some yard work done. We are going to try and get some peas and spinach planted today, I'm looking forward to eating some fresh peas in the afternoon sunlight.