Building a House While Pregnant: This Mama's Experience

Disclosure: I'm going to get real and be a little vulnerable here for a minute, so be nice if you comment.

After googling this subject and coming up with squat I figured maybe that's because most people aren't crazy enough to do it. And, had I seen how long this was going to be taking, I would have done it differently too. Blame my hormones, my husband's encouragement, God's command, the excitement of having a new little one... blame ME. Yes, I am saying that this is not what I pictured. Does that mean I am not thrilled to be having this little boy? Not at all! I couldn't be more happy, but it does mean I don't always feel like I can express that happiness. As soon as I found out I was pregnant I didn't even want to tell anyone because I just didn't want to hear it. Quite honestly I had foolishly thought it would have taken awhile longer to get pregnant and my due date wouldn't have been an issue to our timeline. Not the case and moving on! So, now I am seven month pregnant and staring down my due month like a deer in the headlights. Let me tell you, I have never felt so much stress, pressure and out of control in my life. I could rattle off a laundry list of things that stress me out (read haunt me) daily regardless, but this takes the cake.

First off, I birth my babies at home. At HOME. My home is not done. I currently have no place to give birth. Make this my number one stress.

I have a ton of crap I have moved about a half a dozen times in the last six years and a lot of it I don't even know where it is or that it even exists until I open mystery box number 27. I am not usually a terribly disheveled person, I like to be fairly organized but after you pack and re-pack and re-pack and re-pack you start to just not even bother to unpack any thing but the necessaries. They are just things but not having your things just makes you feel like you don't belong where you are. And, really we don't belong here. My parent's home stopped being mine the day I got married and I have felt an underlying level of guilt and failure since the day we moved back here. Now that our basement is finished enough, I have begun to wade through all our belongings in the basement of my parents house and will soon do the same with the ones in our horse trailer. This I hate. I will love having it be finished, but it is a lot of work and requires me to make a mess in order to accomplish it. I started with the easy and kind of fun stuff: baby things. I am almost done with prepping the baby's needs so soon I will move on to everything else and possibly I will have enough to do a yard sale.

Montana Man and I see very little of each other. This makes me sad. He works all week and then is at the house all weekend. I see him in snippets but it's not the same as being able to spend a whole day together as a family. I am so proud of the work he is doing and his provision for us. This is hard though. Both of us are stressed and exhausted at the end of each day and our marriage is kind of just an after thought right now. We are parenting fine together, but I miss closeness and love. We talk about financing, carpentry, how much time we have left, how much work he will have this week, what's next on the list of to dos. As an emotional and hormonal pregnant lady, this is second in line for stress. I'm trying not to let this bother me so much so that I don't put any more pressure on MM, but lately I have been struggling with it and I'm starting to get depressed.

I am starting to have a hard time keeping up with normal everyday life. I'm bigger, I'm tired and my two little energizer bunnies are running me ragged physically and emotionally. My mom helped me so much yesterday and I am so grateful for her! But, I hate needing help! I just feel guilty that I can't do it all and worry that I am being a burden to those that are helping me. To be honest, yesterday was half physically exhausted and half depressed. Ugh, so frustrating! My children are my life pretty much and to feel like I am failing at that just reinforces my guilt.

One thing that surprises me is that I do not have any fear about mothering three children once I have the baby. Praise be to God, I do not stress about that! In fact, I feel quite peaceful about it. Check one for the positive list!

I'm not writing this post to have anyone pity me and I hope no one will judge me harshly! I am writing this because I am so sick of people just covering up what life really is like! Everyone's got something! I will not feel these things once we are moved in and once the baby is here, but that doesn't mean that the next two months won't be hard. I wish I could read something like this so I guess I wrote this for those that are in the same situation(ish) so they can relate. So, if you are the prayerful type... pray. Pray for someone to finance us so we can stay on track, for Montana Man to stay well and have enough work to keep the bills paid, for the baby to not come early, and for my sinful, worrisome, insecure heart to cling to Jesus.

Pitiful Peas!

Well I knew it was going to be a small harvest, that's just sad! Hahahahaha! Oh, but I did enjoy watching those tendrils grow, one of them right over my head. Tonight I picked them clean, ripped them up and gave them to the chickens for a treat. Once I shell what I picked we should have just enough for a few forkfuls each.

Now with the peas done I can plant the cucumbers where they were so that they can use the chicken wire to climb and I won't need to make a new trellis. I will do a much more detailed report next week, this week has just been too busy and hot!

Til next week!

This post was shared at Green Thumb Thursday Bloghop.

Looking Ahead: Calculating How Much to Grow to Feed Our Family

Starting seeds for herbs, fall cabbage and brussels sprouts.
I have a confession. I hate math but I love to calculate and budget things. Weird, I know, but I never said I wasn't a strange one! When Montana Man is away I like to keep myself busy in the evenings and lately I have been wrapping my head around how we can affordably, both with money and space, grow the majority of our food. If you were to look at our grocery receipts you would see I spend 80-90% of our food budget on produce (organic mostly), dairy products and animal protein most weeks. If I am re-stocking our gluten free pantry than this skews the ratio a bit... but you get my point. I can easily spend $20-$40 a week just on produce (or $1,040-$2,080 a year!). This year as I have seen positive fruits from my garden it has motivated me to solve the puzzle that is fitting all the plants we need into an affordable space within means I can actually achieve. I have now seen that properly managed intensive planting (more plants in less space) actually works and it has really encouraged me! So, I started my project with a list (of course) of all the veggies and legumes we eat regularly that I felt are practical for us to grow ourselves.

Our family eats in a year (approximately):

Tomatoes: 200 pounds
Onions: 108 pounds
Carrots: 48 pounds
Potatoes: 300 pounds
Green Beans: 30 pounds
Dry Beans: 20 pounds
Beets: 50 pounds -
Broccoli: 50 pounds
Brussels Sprouts: 10 pounds
Cabbage: 30 pounds
Butternut Squash: 50 pounds
Spaghetti Squash: 100 pounds
Pumpkin: 20 pounds
Zucchini: 20 pounds
Summer Squash: 10 pounds
Peas: 10 pounds
Peppers, Bell: 50 pounds
Peppers, Hot: 25 pounds
Parsnips: 20 pounds
Spinach: 50 pounds
Swiss Chard: 50 pounds
Kale: 25 pounds
Garlic: 50 bulbs
Cucumbers: 50 pounds

Chicken: 80 pounds +
Red Meat (beef, venison, moose, bison): 60 pounds
Pork: 50 pounds
Fish and Seafood: 50 pounds -/+
Eggs: 50 dozen+ (we already have a laying flock)

Milk: 100 gallons +
Cheese: 80 pounds
Yogurt: 20 quarts +
Other dairy: 20 pounds +

Apples: 50 pounds +
Berries: 50 pounds -/+
Stone Fruit: 25 -/+
Rhubarb: 15 pounds -/+
Bananas: 100 pounds -/+
Grapes: 20 pounds +
Melons: 50 pounds +

I am not going to list our grains simply because it is superfluous to this project, we will never have enough land or money to grow our own grains efficiently. And, honestly, we tend not to eat a grain based diet so I don't mind continuing to buy this category from the store or perhaps someday from a local mill or even online. If we were too look at this from a "survival" perspective, potatoes would be a fine replacement starch in our diet and cornmeal would once again be a staple as it was centuries ago. We would likely be healthier for it!

Each family is different and your list would likely look much different than mine. These amounts are also based on our current family size of two adults and two children who are eating real food. Once baby #3 starts eating solids as a main diet the amounts will likely increase slightly.

After printing graph paper to test fit and playing with companion and succession planting theories I concluded that with the available area with full sun around our house we can grow most of the vegetables we need in five 12' x 4' and two 3' x 20' raised beds. The two 20' beds will be along the southwest facing wall of the house and the other beds will be on the northeast side of the house beyond the house's shadow. I believe each spot gets at least six hours of sun but I will track it more carefully this summer to make sure. So, with these seven beds plus what I currently have that gives me 405 square feet. I'm sure many of more seasoned gardeners think that sounds completely ridiculous and way too small. If it is, then I guess I will find out and need to add on! But, here is how I broke it down:

12' x 4'

Bed 1:
48 potato plants (1 square foot per plant)

Bed 2:
3 zucchini
2 summer squash
4 pumpkins
4 butternut squash
4 spaghetti squash
(all have at least 24" square and vines are run over the sides, bush varieties in the middle)

Bed 3:
16 broccoli (18" square per plant)
96 pole beans (trellised, one row on each side, 3" spacing)
8 brussel sprouts (1 square foot per plant)

Bed 4:
16 broccoli (18" square per plant)
48 cucumbers (trellised, one row on each side, 6" spacing)
16 cabbage (18" square per plant)

Bed 5:
144 peas (trellised, one row on each side, 2" spacing)
108 onions (4" plant spacing, 6" row spacing)
360 carrots (2" plant spacing, 4" row spacing)- spring
48 beets (3" plant spacing, 1 row)- fall
144 spinach (3" plant spacing, 4" row spacing)- fall

20' x 3'

Bed 1:
13 tomatoes (18" x 24" per plant)
160 bush beans, for dry beans (3" plant spacing, 6" row spacing)

Bed 2:
13 tomatoes (18" x 24" per plant)
180 onions (4" plant spacing, 6" row spacing)

Four 3' x 2' beds:
swiss chard
kale
any experimental greens

7' x 3' bed:
spring spinach
miscellaneous fall/winter crops

Topsy Turvy planter(s):
all peppers
(I have 1 and would like to get 3 more)

I used a few online charts to give me rough ideas of crop yields and such (just Google 'vegetable yield per plant') and paired that with how much we eat of what and how frequent. Not rocket science but quite a mental chore especially for my pregnant brain! Of course all this calculating and planning is well and good, but the true test of whether I am right or not will come a year after we harvest. We will either have enough or not. I did list other food categories above but I am going to keep this post to just vegetables so it doesn't become a book! In the next few years we would like to add raising a pig every spring, a milk cow and raise her bull calves for meat but keep or sell heifers and hopefully our new chickens will be hatching chicks every year for our freezer and to replace old hens. This year we will are raising 32 roosters for meat and that will give us about 160 pounds of dressed meat which should see us through a year at least plus all the chicken stock I could ever need!

I've just started a few more seeds today for fall savoy cabbage and brussels sprouts as well as herbs that I had kinda forgotten about. I don't grow many herbs right now simply because I don't have a ton of room. At the house I will be making a dedicated perennial herb garden as well as grow more annual culinary herbs probably in pots. I do use a lot of herbs in my cooking so it would be nice to grow a surplus and dry them since most are fairly expensive now. I would also like to perhaps plant some garlic in the fall but this may depend on whether I have my raised beds in or if I want to sacrifice most of my large raised bed in the greenhouse... decisions, decisions!

Alright! That's enough for today, til next time!

This post was shared at Green Thumb Thursday Bloghop.

June House Progress

This weekend we poured the basement floor! Finally, and we could not have asked for a better day to do it. It was warm but dry with the humidity only around 40% which is uncommon for Maine in June. God was being gracious! With only my dad and Montana Man working the concrete my dad had ordered it with a higher moisture content so it would set slower and give them more time to manipulate it so it was level. With all that extra moisture we were prepared for it to take forever to cure but with the stiff breeze, the gaping hole in the side of the house and the low humidity it was hard enough to walk on by afternoon. By now, a day later, it is hard enough to start unloading and moving some of our belongings that have been in storage for years into the basement! Normally I wouldn't be this excited but I have a lot of things to sort through and organize before we move into the upstairs and I just don't think I will be up to it in September or for months afterward. You don't realize how much stuff you have until you have moved it around a half dozen times. We have a large horse trailer, about 100 square feet in my parents crawl space in their basement and what we are currently using upstairs. That's a lot to go through and weed out! Especially my books... I have a lot of books. Anyway, lets get back to this floor shall we?

You might notice the silver shiny stuff on the floor that the concrete was going over. That is 1" polystyrene (foam board) insulation with a reflective coating. While the reflective coating really wasn't necessary, that type of foam board was what was available and the most affordable. We chose to insulate the slab because with the walls being completely insulated with the ICF forms it only made sense to complete the thermal barrier so the basement will not be effected by the ground temperature or moisture. This means heating the basement and keeping it dry without a dehumidifier will be much easier. In fact, it provides such a great envelope that heating the house above it with a pellet stove will be entirely enough even in the coldest weather. Even if a house is only on a slab foundation I would still encourage using a foam insulation under it to beak the thermal barrier to avoid cracking and cold floors. It's worth the extra money!


After the floor was poured we had some extra concrete which we had already paid for so Montana Man threw a form together in front of the porch for a pad which our steps will base from. We had not planned on this but it is a nice perk! Of course we had to put the kids hand prints, our hand prints and the year in the pad. I only have pictures of the kids doing theirs!

I'm glad we got to put our prints somewhere we will see them often. My brother and I did ours in the wall of the addition when we were little but it got covered by an exterior wall so we will probably never see them again! Montana Man kind of balked at putting his in but as he had never done it in his life I felt this was important, another piece of his childhood that he could make up for. I only wish there was a way for the baby to be able to add his! Perhaps I will just plant his placenta with a tree instead, hahahaha! He should be born in this house so I guess that's pretty profound *winkwink*.

I will have to do a part two to this post and add more pictures of other things before the month is out. There is a good chance we will have all the windows and part of the siding on by the end of next weekend, they are to be delivered Monday morning! It may be slower than some but progress is progress and I am still hopeful for a September move in date.

Stay tuned!

Garden Record Keeping and Why it is Important

Glacier tomatoes bloomed on June 16th!
If you are like most gardeners with a few years under your belt, every winter after the holidays you probably curl up on the couch with your seed catalog or laptop and start making a list for the upcoming growing season. While this is fun and can take hours, this really is serious business if you are growing for any reason other than pure fun. As a young homesteader I look at these first five to ten years as my learning curve, a time to single out varieties that can become tried and true residents in my garden every year. While I do have a fairly good memory, I also am pretty busy and have small children who take up 95% of my brain power daily. I want to remember details about what I am growing, not just whether I liked it and if it produced well. This is why I have started working on a garden record spread sheet. If I can rope my hubby into helping me I would gladly make it available as a print out in the few weeks!

Northeaster pole beans starting to climb.

Now, what is worth recording and what is being a little too detailed? Well, I believe in two different methods of record keeping: a journal and actual record sheets. The journal is where I tend to bring in more detail such as rain fall or watering frequency, growth patterns, when I fertilized, what kind of fertilizer I used, if I needed to replant any seeds, what I liked the taste of, etc. With a record sheet I record things like the planting date, did I start indoors or direct seed, first harvest date, average weight of harvest, last harvest date, etc. Many gardeners only use a journal (truthfully, I have been using this blog as my "garden journal" for two years now!), but I feel a record sheet makes things a bit more black and white for planning the next years seed nominees. For someone with limited garden space, forgetting which variety out preformed the other could cost me, literally! I would feel really silly if I ordered a vegetable that took up too much space and produced either small quantities or poor quality food. This doesn't mean I won't try new varieties once I find my basic stock for reliable yearly produce, but I will be able to more freely try these new varieties knowing we have back up if it's a disappointment.

Pea pods starting to plump.

In this generation of hybrid seeds, I can see why we are forced to keep records! There are so many out there and all claim to be terrific. Heirlooms are what I gravitate towards for many reasons but the most is that you have to know that it was good enough that someone painstakingly saved the seeds from their own plants. Think about this! At the end of the season gardeners weren't filling out charts to remember what they wanted to order next year, they already knew exactly what they were planting next year because they saved the seeds. Poetic, I think!

Go figure my wire potting tables just happened to be the perfect height for pole beans stood up on their ends! I love multi-taskers.

This year I ended up with more hybrids than I usually choose, mostly because I didn't choose them! I bought in a co-op with friends and while I enjoy the expectant nature of trying something new, I will be choosing all heirlooms next year so that I may start saving seeds. I will likely still order some seeds every year but I do think seed saving is an art worth sustaining for many reasons.

I am so impressed by how well the peppers are doing in this planter.

Another thing I will be keeping track of is what and how much I can grow in what sized raised bed. I had mentioned wanting to try the Back to Eden gardening method, but I am really in love with raised beds right now! The BTE method is not what I would call space saving and I have to say I love my tall raised bed we added this year, much easier on my back and needs far less water than my shallower beds. My intention is to make all the raised beds about 20"-24" tall. Likely we will make them 12' x 4' (48 square feet) and install 4-8 of them this fall depending on our funds and time. I would like to make a matching deep bed for the greenhouse to grow our cold weather crops in during early spring and late fall. Right now I am just amazed by how much just a 2' x 3' bed has been producing! So, I think it worth while to keep track of how much each bed size and depth produced and also with what spacing.

After about a week of settling in the perpetual spinach has taken off!

After learning a little more each year and investing in some quality materials I am thrilled with how well things are growing this year. I have learned that eight Swiss chard plants are enough for one weekly cutting but 12-16 would provide us with at least two and possibly some to freeze. Peas are easy to grow but you need a lot of plants to get a good crop! And, Russian kale has a stronger flavor than curly kale but with more tender stems. All these things will be going on the books!

Another few weeks and the greenhouse will be in jungle status!

One of our greens harvest from last week. They are giving us 1-2 cuttings a week and I am no longer buying greens from the store!
Start those records while the season is still young! Til next time.


This post was share on Green Thumb Thursday Bloghop.