The Fitness Challenge

Today I took my final physical fitness test for my fitness challenge at work. Our challenge consisted of as many pushups as you can muster and how long it takes to do a mile. I know that there was improvement from the initial test 45 days ago. I wish I did more. Of course that is said in hindsight.
Those struggles have gone into my adult life. TV and fast food are my kryptonite and my lifelong struggle. Last year I even had my doctor help me along by giving me pills to assist with the weigh loss. I lost almost 30 pounds. They got put back on. I started freaking out because...well...that is a topic for another time. So now, I am working on losing weight by working hard, waning the TV and fast food and working through my struggles one day at a time.

At the beginning of the contest, I had high hopes of working out on schedule, multiple times a week so I could double the number of push ups and cut a quartr of time out of my mile. I fell short of my goal, but there was improvement. I hope for more drive in the coming months. My Scottish highland instructor, Jill is looking to encourage me more. I even volunteered for a more strenous workout schedule from her. Anything to get me off the couch. My struggles with my health have been life long. I was always the chubby kid and no matter how much I worked out, there was always a couch, a tv and plenty of Saturday afternoon lunches at McDonalds and after softball celebrations at either Pizza Hut or the local Tastee Freeze. I was definitely a child of the 80s. Fitness was always something that was on my mind, I had high hopes for success, but laziness seemed to be all too easy growing up. I remember when I was in a Sunday School class one day, we were discussing our favorite times of the year. Someone mentioned that they always put on extra pounds when school began and lost more in the summer. I found that odd because mine was the opposite. Although I kept physically active, there were a lot of those eating adventures mentioned above.

Plant Date 2011-06-09

Temp has dropped twenty degrees in the past hour.

New herbs that I received from a friend and avid gardener are now in the ground. Here is hoping that the awesome soil they came in can amend the existing soil enough for the plants to thrive. If so, I will have one awesome herb garden.

The herbs that I have received are the following: oregano, thyme, sage, chives, lemon verbena, bee balm, horehound, sweet marjoram, sweet woodruff. These join what I have already planted of basil, oregano, rosemary.

The basil took a bit of a beating this week with the extreme temps. By Tuesday evening, the leaves were in a downward slope. After today's rain, the leaves have sprung back to life and I have removed the one yellowed leaf that was on the bottom of the plant. I have to wonder if this leaf yellowed because of the heat, the soil or because of the mulch that has been around it.

Listening to WHYY's You Bet Your Garden http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/index.html, I learned not to use wood chips as mulch around herbs and vegetables. This is mostly due to the wood that wants to decompose competing in the same soil as the plant that wants to grow. They suggested items like ground leaves and newspaper. 

Pumpkins, beans and one tomato plant are shooting up nicely but the others are struggling to emerge. I planted the pumpkins and bush beans from seed about 1.5 weeks ago. They have sprouted quite nicely. Of the three tomato starts, only one survives and that is in a container. How do you kill a container plant with fresh garden soil?

The lettuce barely grew and I have yet to see a pea. I have the plants that have sprouted, but no pods.

Eggplant, butternut squash, peppers, carrots and the basil all from seed each have emerged from the ground and are now so tiny. They have been in the ground almost a month now and I fear for their future. I have one cucumber plant that is growing nicely. These are all in the square foot garden that I prepared by hand earlier this spring.


I am hoping that my plants grow and thrive and that we will have some vegetables come harvest time to preserve for the winter. I have a feeling that we will have a lot of beans so plans are in place for stringing, freezing and canning.

In the front, I have planted perennial flowers. I was given a hummingbird garden from  "The Bluebird Man"  on Migratory Bird Day. I started a little patch next to the Butterfly Bush. Being all native seeds, there is no certainty as to when these plants will emerge. In the larger section, where I cut down the yew bushes last year, I have planted chamomile, lavender, shasta daisy and foxglove. I may or may not see growth this year, we shall see.

Another local gardener this past week offered up some extra lettuce and chives that were overtaking her space. After a hectic weekend and start to the week, my husband was finally able to help her with her dilemma and take some lettuce and chives off of her hands. She also gave us some spearmint. I look forward to having fresh chives handy and saving some for our cooking adventures. I plan on saving a leaf or two of the spearmint to start growing and maintaining in a container year round. Spearmint tea is in the plans as well as working on making oils. I also found a neat recipe for creating a paste for certain herbs and freezing them. Here is the link for that information: http://www.bhg.com/recipes/how-to/food-storage-safety/freezing-herbs/

This is my first year for my garden. I am trying to work with the space that I have the best that I can. Please let me know what suggestions you may have for this. I can see gardening becoming an enjoyable hobby as well as a need for sustenance. After listening to countless hours of podcasts on gardens and reading a hefty stack of books on the subject, it is looking like I may be turning my brown thumb green. Time will tell. In the mean time, I sure do enjoy putting my bare hands into the soil and watching a plant sprout.

Thank you.

Mobile Home Living

Back in November of 2008, our budding family consisting of myself, my husband Timm and our infant son Asher moved from a two bedroom apartment to a two bedroom mobile home. We made the decision to move based on several factors including health, financial and a jump start to our lives.

The first reason had to do with our apartment becoming infested with black mold inside and outside of the walls and the landlords would not fix it. Having a son born with lung issues, this was an immediate concern for his well being.

Another factor was the cost. For about $200 less per month, we could have a home with a yard, a shed and about 500 more square feet of moving around room. That is correct, a two bedroom apartment we inhabited was $650 a month and for apartments of that size in the nice area we were living in, that was on the low end. We moved to our mobile home and lot rent was $408 a month for our corner lot. Initially we were paying the owner of the mobile home an extra $65 a month in our rather lax contract for deed deal until our taxes came back in February and we were able to pay off the rest of the $3500 purchase price. The price for our home was really inexpensive as it is a 1973 model. The mobile home across the street from us was brand new in 2008 with a hefty price tag of $40,000.

Three, we had had an opportunity prior to the economic collapse to purchase a home with a sub-prime mortgage. Although we did look around for a few months and even attempted to purchase a home, the deal fell through and we were forever grateful. I had had that feeling in the pit of my stomach--as we were whisked from house to house, sat in front of number crunchers and at one time told that we had to move fast because big changes were coming soon--that purchasing a house was a bad idea. Ultimately it was because I had an outstanding balance on my car coupled with my husband’s poor credit choices when he was younger for why we did not get the money pit home we were hoping to make our own. I felt that the mortgage guys we spoke with knew what was coming down the pipeline and were trying to get in as many commissions and people in homes as fast as possible. Within a year of our rejection, the big crash in the housing market, as well as the rest of the economy, sent our nation into a downward spiral that we as a nation are still trying to clean up. This downward spiral has limited job prospects and has opened our eyes to adapting our style of living to a more frugal lifestyle.

I grew up in the 1980s, the era of Reaganomics. My dad worked for Caterpillar and things were going well until the Big Layoff. The Big Layoff turned into no one wants to hire a Cat man because of the union and the open-ended question of when he would be called back. We went from a comfortable frugal lifestyle to working poor. Any money my parents may have saved was gone shortly after the layoff in order to keep the household functioning. We had to travel to Bloomington, far away from anyone we knew to grocery shop because we had to get food stamps, the ultimate shame.

I will delve into the Frugalnomics and growing up more at another time, but this serves as a point in life lessons and sculpting my future based on my past. I learned a lot from this time, but I was dumb in my twenties and the lesson on frugality that I learned from them did not stick until I had a family of my own and we moved into our humble home.

I have seen so many people lose their homes, suffer from economic ruin and crawl through bankruptcy court as a result of this latest collapse.

As a result of all of the lessons learned in life, our mobile home has become a learning lab for us in homesteading and frugal living. It has served as our headquarters for our lives and for our budding production house and film studio. Repairs are minimal but enough to feel what kind cost and pain one can incur in a real house.

This year, I am taking more steps to increase our frugality and prove to myself that I can alleviate my brown thumb and create more of a self-sufficient homestead for my family.

We have now lived here for about two and a half years, rent has gone up $10 a month and our skills and goals for our homestead are finally coming to fruition. We have grown a lot in that time frame and are now moving forward into becoming the type of family that I had always wanted.

At times I feel that living in a mobile home has made some people look down at us and view us as “those type of lower class, trashy people,” I have also learned not to let my perception of what others think about me cloud the decisions I have made to positively influence my family. The positives have far outweighed the negatives and have catapulted our adventures in urban homesteading.

Yours truly,
Emilie

After thought: Thank you for reading my first blog. I look forward to providing you a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog in my adventures in urban homesteading, film production, screen writing, frugal living and raising a son. Please feel free to comment and I will do my best to reply in a timely manner.

Quick News

2 weeks of day job left.

Starting to sink in that there is not much out there.

Planning on taking some time to move into different career, being a mom, working on the urban homestead and getting our own business up and running.

Stay tuned for updates on our new Circus-13 website, an etsy store and homestead producer blog entries.

Wish List

Teach my son and a few other kids in a home environment.

Move my homestead from the starting phase to the next level while at our current location:

Indoor garden-- wondering about the aerogarden
Make a starter compost

Tackle Knitting

Learn the recorder and keyboard
Pick up sewing again

Support hubby in his efforts to become a filmmaker by serving duties as producer, costumer, prop maker, make up person, teacher

Become less dependent on television.

New Beginnings, Old Ideas

I have spent a good portion of the year purging various odds and ends as well as defining myself and our family. A lot of progress has been made. Last night, I had the opportunity to cleanse myself of the old negative and refresh/renew with the positive.

I have done pretty well with defining the family as well as getting my belief system into check. There is one exception and that is where my political beliefs lie. I am working to define that, right now, I am not seeing myself attached to a party affiliation. I am having a difficult time understanding what each party stands for and in this political season, I have seen a lot of sensationalist garbage from both of the major political parties. I understand the benefits of rallying behind one party, however perhaps I will just need to concede to choosing the best candidate for the position and continue living as a responsible American.

I am working on the definition of a responsible American. More research will need to be done.

I know that some values I am working on include the following:
Save your pennies
Help your neighbor
Practice Self Restraint
Reduce Reuse Recycle
Leave the area better looking than when you found it
Take only what you need
Use what you take
Practice selflessness
Take care of yourself
Take care of your family
Plan on paying for own retirement
Be Independent
Understand my rights
Play nice with others
Understand that we have our strengths and weaknesses
I set my own bar
Inspiration comes in many forms. Recognize and use wisely
Continue to grow and move forward
Just Keep swimming.
See a need fill a need