This is a little something I wrote on the blog of my college class that I thought I might share with you. Enjoy.

I realized that there are a lot of things that I am doing that are sustainable practices. I have cloth diapers that I made myself that I use to diaper my baby. All of our laundry is done in cold water. We have a rain barrel harvesting system in place, we grow all of our own vegetables. I raise my own chickens and milk my own goat (and yes I live in the city, so this is possible). I sew all of my daughters clothes. I grind my own wheat that I buy from local farmers. We don’t own a TV. We harvest our goat kids for meat as well as a few cattle. We have almost no solid waste, which means that our garbage is taken away less than once a month. We have no plastic bottles in our house because all of our food is made a home. I make all of our mayonnaise and mustard, chocolate sauce and nutella. I make my own cream of wheat from the wheat that I grind. I have no gallon milk containers because I use glass. All of my things are stored in glass that I reuse over and over again. I take very short showers because I only wash my hair once a week. My baby only takes baths in 1-2 inch water, etc. The only thing that I don’t do great is that I drive. We live in a rural city that is very small. There is no other choice but to drive, and I think that my carbon footprint, if you will, is greatly reduced by many of the other things that I do. For example, I save a cup of crude oil every time I change my daughter’s diaper. That feels good.

I have chosen to become really involved in the game of being sustainable. I do it for the environment, yes, but I do it for myself as well. My family is happy knowing that I make all of our cheese. We get to harvest our chickens when we want, and I don’t have to wonder if they were given antibiotics. My eggs come from the hens that laid them right outside my window. My daughter gets to come with me to milk the goat every day, and she reaps the benefits of drinking raw goats milk and raw goats milk cheese. These actions have drawn us closer as a family because we are forced to confront what we are doing in our lives and what effect those actions have on others. I think that is what sustainability really is.

I think that I am a victim of laundry discrimination,a nd I would like to formally take a stand.

You see, this weekend (and at times in the past) Jared helped me do the laundry because I was very busy.

When it came to the folding step, his clothes got folded and Daphne’s did as well. I found mine in the basket clearly neglected. How sad.

He says there is a reason, but there is always a reason.

Tonight, during dinner, Daphne was wining about wanting something to eat. We offered her many, many things, and none of them seemed to please her.

I got the brilliant idea to give her some Cherios, which were on the other counter.

When I poured them out in front of her, I got a very distinctive Ta Tou.

It was very nice of her to have such good manners.

I have had my garden beds set up for some time, but I have been waiting for the spring frost and the late snow to leave before I planted my garden.

Finally, we have had some nice weather here, so I went out and did some planting. Daphne was along for the ride.

There is an awful lot of planting to do, so I was trying to plan it all out. I would plant the seeds and then mark them with a popsicle stick. I had a perfect system–or so I thought.

Right behind me as I planted was a little monster digging up all the seeds and pulling the markers out.

It was a long day and I am only 2/5 done at best.

Daphne has learned to climb up onto things.

We can no longer leave anything on the table because she will inevitably climb on up and start to munch on it or throw it on the floor.

This principle of not leaving anything out you don’t want played with or ruined rolls over into other practical areas.

Apparently, leaving the chair in front of my sewing table has some disastrous side effects as well.

Earnest Hemmingway was once challenged to write a story using only six words. His brilliant story was:
“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.”

My brilliant six word biography is:

“Hippie photographer farmer mom loves Greece.”

Not as good as Hemmingway, but you get the idea of who I am at least.

What is your six word biography?

I have been a little sporadic about posting recently, at least it feels that way, I used to post several posts a day, and I am down to one per day. I have even slowed down on taking video and photos.

And I plan to remedy that.

Daphne does not like to let me work on my computer AT ALL, which means that the time I get to sit down to myself is either when she is napping or when she has gone to bed (or has not yet woken up).

Usually, she takes her nap when I go to milk the goat. She falls asleep in the car and I park it in the shade with the windows rolled down and the radio on while I head around the corner to milk the goat. She then stays asleep until I get home, where I turn the radio on and roll the windows down.

I don’t like to leave her in the car herself, so during this time, I have been going outside with my snap press (used to put snaps on diapers), and I sit outside of the car making diapers until she wakes up again.

The only problem with this system of sleeping is that I don’t get the things I need to do.

You see, when Daphne is asleep, I have to allocate my time.

Do I

a.) pay the bills and balance the checking acount
b.) reply to emails that I have been ignoring for some time
c.) get back to wedding clients I am a little late on talking to
d.) clean the house up after Hurricane Daphne
e.) make the diapers that are my new way of living
f.) start to make the food in the kitchen that needs to be made
g.) get caught up on school
e.) do any other project around the house I can’t do with a baby
f.) blog

Truth be told, everything gets put off for the most part except for getting caught up on college. Email is not a good way to contact me right now, nor is the phone. I guess I am just in a little hole while I work through all this stuff I have to do.

You see, I still am determined to go to school. I have only 2 semesters left as long as I can get PSU to honor one more semester that I did abroad. That means that I will be graduating by December. I can always take another year of torture or so right? Having my degree will make me feel like I completed something and accomplished something. I will get a lot of time back when I do complete my degree, but for now, it is a permanent part of my life.

I am also starting to make diapers for money. It is official. I am finishing 40 diapers right now for someone and then I have more sets to go. The good news is that if I sell 11,500 diapers, I will pay off our debt. The bad news is that that does not count taxes, and that is a LOT of diapers to make. The 40 I am working on now is a huge project. I am taking it one step at a time, but this is the only method I can come up with of paying down our debt.

I don’t know why I am so desperate to pay off our debt. Jared and my lives will be a lot easier without this money looming over our heads. We pay a fair amount of our monthly budget to it every month. As soon as we pay off the credit cars, I am going to cut up the cards so that they can’t be used. I won’t close the accounts because that dings your credit for when you go to buy a house or anything, but I just plan to leave them there empty never to be used again. The good news is that Jared is feeling so, so much better that this should never be a problem again.

Truth be told, I really, really want a farm, and I really, really want to have some more babies. Jared says we can’t have another baby until we are out of debt, which at the past rate was going to take about 8 years. That is too long for me, so I am desperately trying to figure out how to pay off these credit cards so that I can move on with my life. So much of our attention and income would be freed up to do things like pay taxes and maybe save for retirement!

And the most important part… having another baby.

And so, I continue to do the things that I have been doing.

I am milking the goat and making lots of cheese. I have some Creme Fraiche and some Chevre culturing right now along side the gallon of yogurt that I made for Jared as well.

I plan to make some hard cheeses in the future, but I’m going to have to figure out how to press the cheese to do that.

That’s life in a nutshell, sorry for not talking a whole lot more about it on a daily basis.

Daphne has kind of tapered off a little bit in the words she is learning. She has her basic, mama, dada, Flaff words, and she is not really adding much to them right now. I am in no hurry, so it is not a big deal to me at all.

Sometimes, she will go for a while without saying and words, and I will ask, “Can you say mama?”

It really is the sweetest thing when she says “mama” and she knows exactly what she is saying.