How To Share Costs In A Stocked-Up Kitchen

One thing my new roommate and I are dealing with is something that more and more people might be facing in the coming times:  different challenges in our attempt to equitably share food costs.

Back in the days of college roommates, sharing grocery costs was easy — you just split the grocery receipts, at least for items that both people consumed.

But now we have two factors complicating things.  First, I’ve been stocking up on staples for years now.  And second, we have different budgets and quality standards for some items — for example, one of us buys expensive dogfood and one of us buys cheaper stuff.  And agreeing to each keep buying our separate items can make the household logistics a bit silly:  feed this dog a scoop from THIS bag, and that dog a scoop from THAT bag…  But if budget constraints preclude one person from going halfsies on the good quality stuff, that doesn’t mean the other person will wish to feed their dog the cheaper stuff.  So, we keep the separate bags for different dogs.  Good thing we have plenty of storage space!  And sometimes it even feels a bit snobbish — like my dog is eating prime rib while hers are eating ground round.  Sometimes I think I should just share the good stuff with her — but actually, I tried to do that — I suggested we mix bags together and the dogs get a mix — but K didn’t feel good about doing that, because she didn’t feel she could afford to pay for her share of the good stuff.

It got even more complicated when we considered ‘people food’.  She of course wants to pay her share of food, but it certainly makes no sense for us to fuss over how much she should reimburse me for each cup of rice or beans we use from my stock — especially since we’ve been cooking together a lot, which is a HUGE benefit to me, as I need the motivation and inspiration to move toward being more of a cook myself.

Again, the challenge is not just to be equitable, but also to accommodate our differing budgets.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has any recommendations about this kind of situation.  But in the meantime, here’s what we’ve agreed to:

I told her that she should consider that the rent she is paying me includes use of any of the stored staples in the house — this includes rice, beans, oatmeal, flour, spices, etc.  If she’s regularly making something just for herself then perhaps this might feel awkward, but most of our use of those kinds of foods is for shared consumption.  Also, she will share whatever staples she happens to have if it fits with our needs.  Then, for the items we buy to complete our recipes, such as veggies, cheese, etc, we will share the cost.  Some things, such as soymilk, we don’t want to have two containers open at the same time, so we will use up what I have (most of a case) and then we will share the cost of replacing it.  This means that I’ve effectively contributed half of what I initially had to her, but all costs after that would be shared.  That’s okay too — I just think of it as more “included in the rent” type stuff.

We’ve agreed to see how this approach works, and if anything doesn’t seem like it’s being addressed fairly, we’ll revisit it.  But considering that managing my stocks is a separate but important part of being stocked up, I definitely want to encourage us to use what I have — especially that brown rice that’s already been stored for 2 years or so!

So far we’ve made a couple of delicious meals.  First she made a cold bean and rice salad we’ve both been taking to work for lunch: black beans and brown rice, mixed with chopped cabbage, broccoli, carrots, garlic, cilantro, onions.  Then we add some balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and yum!

We also made a lentil soup with curry powder, onion, garlic, various herbs, and a hamhock.

[Note:  While I've never been a 100% vegetarian, I've only had meat a few times per year for several years now.  Because K is not vegetarian, she sometimes wants meat in her dishes.  But she doesn't make meat the center of the meal, nor eat it every day.  Because I so value the cooking lessons/experience I'm gaining by cooking together with her, I've decided to relax my vegetarianism for a while.  As I said, this does not mean meat in every meal, nor does it mean meat as the primary part of a meal.  But I didn't object to the hamhock she put in the lentil soup, and I won't object to the buffalo meat we plan to put in a red bean chili this coming week.  We might even make buffalo burgers once!  I will, however, continue my beef boycott -- fortunately the buffalo is available and I doubt she'd want to eat regular beef anyway!]

And I’ve made pancakes a few times so far — that was one of the items on my list of ten things I wanted to add to my “do without thinking” cooking options.  The pancakes haven’t worked too well, but we’re narrowing down the cause — honey that was too hard, a kamut mix that cooks differently than regular flour, and a pan that had burned spots on the surface and so didn’t cook well.  We’ll try again tomorrow and see how many of these things we can change/fix.

I’ve also made one pumpkin pie this season, just after Thanksgiving.  Need to do a few more before I can say it doesn’t require thinking, though.

As The World Turns

First I didn’t post because there wasn’t much happening — just going to work, walking the dog, and making slow progress on my reading and cooking projects.  THEN I didn’t post because there was too MUCH happening and I didn’t have time! 

The big change is, I now have a housemate.  I’ll call her K (but it’s not the same K who was going to lease the fields from me when I first moved here — that plan fell flat almost immediately when K acquired a herd of goats and no longer had time for any other projects — her time was filled by a series of one “goatastrophe” after the other).

No, this K is a friend of one of my employers, and we met at a potluck a few years ago.  She recently moved here to work for the employer/friend, at least through spring, and her original housing plan didn’t work out, so I offered her a room here.  She’s very nice, with two great dogs that are getting along fine not only with my dog but also with my cat, about whom I’d been a bit worried.  She cooks and gardens, and will help me learn in both arenas.  She doesn’t know much about computers and if she wants I will help her learn about that.

Today we had a nice relaxing Thanksgiving.  We went for our usual dog walk but extended it into a longer hike up the hill behind the house where there is some spectacular scenery.  I dug one row of potatoes from the garden and boiled them up for some really yummy mashed potatoes with sour cream-horseradish dressing.  K made gravy (and I watched and learned).  We made stuffing from a box, opened cans of cranberries and mandarin oranges, steamed some fresh broccoli and celery.  I cooked half a local pumpkin, intending to make pumpkin pie, but it took so long to cook (on the woodstove on a not-so-cold day when the stove was only puttering along) that I postponed the pie-making until tomorrow.

We talked all day while we were hiking and cooking and doing other chores.  Then we ate dinner and watched “Strangers In Good Company”, a delightful movie that had just enough display of “survival skills” to fit my movie genre criteria :)

So, things are a little different for me these days.  I have lots of reasons why I prefer to live alone if I’m not living with a life partner; but there are also lots of benefits to sharing a house, and this time I decided it was the right thing to do.  So far (it’s been nearly a week) it’s working out wonderfully.

Now I’m Cookin’ With Ga — er, Wood!

My other “focus” project for myself this winter, in addition to the reading/decluttering project, has to do with cooking.  I’ve never been much of a cook, and now is the time to change that.  I’m not aiming toward fancy dishes, nor even toward a huge repertoire.  I just want to expand my list of what I can cook COMFORTABLY — meaning 1) in a hurry, 2) when I’m stressed, anxious or upset, and 3) without thinking too hard about it.  Without a cookbook would be nice, but some things are just going to need a written recipe — my goal is for it to be easy for me — meaning I know which cookbook it’s in, and what ingredients I need (without looking at the cookbook, so I can get the ingredients on a whim in town when I decide to make something) — or make sure I’ve stocked up so that I *know* I have what I need.  I think it’s also important that I develop a sense of what’s important and what’s flexible, for each meal, so that I know when I can substitute or do without some particular ingredient (as well as add extras!).

For example, a few years ago I decided that my “standard” potluck dish would be sauteed mushrooms.  It’s something that most people like, but it’s not a typical potluck dish so I never worry about someone else bringing the same thing.  I’ve made it often enough that I know what I put into it, I know whether I can make a batch with that partial stick of butter or whether I need more (and whether I can substitute olive oil for the butter if I want).  I know how little (or how much) garlic I want.  I know how much time it takes, how much of my energy it takes (ie how far in advance I need to start).  I’m comfortable with it, in other words.

I want to add ten dishes to my “comfortable” repertoire this winter.

Without getting too bogged down in rules, here’s what I’m thinking:

Stir fry, rice/beans, soup, stew, chili, bread, biscuits/gravy, pancakes, pie, cookies, lasagna.

Stir fry:  I’ve rarely if ever made a stir fry.  I want to make it often enough that I can ” throw a stir fry together” using whatever I have laying around.  I have a wok and want to get in the habit of using it (or get rid of it if it’s not the right tool, but from what I hear it’s an excellent tool).

Rice/beans:  Of course I’ve made rice and beans before.  But I want to experiment with some new kinds of beans, and a variety of seasonings.

Soup:  Ditto, I’ve made lots of different soups before.  But none that I can just “throw together”.  I’ve made some I really like (carrot-ginger, mmm!) that I just need to make a few more times so that it’s etched into my mind and I don’t need the recipe in front of me anymore.  With other soups I need to learn about spices, as the veggies turn out horribly bland, and the water isn’t brothy, so it’s just soggy veggies in water.  I think learning a few tricks about seasoning soups will do wonders for me.

Stew:  same as soup, just focusing on root vegetables (and perhaps a touch of meat if I can find local/organic sources — but perhaps not — I haven’t cooked meat at home for many years now, and haven’t decided to change that, but I’m not overly attached to it, as long as I’m happy with the source of the meat — oh, except for beef, I still boycott that).

Chili: I’ve only made chili once, and it was years ago and I’m pretty sure it had ground beef in it.  I’d like to learn to make a tasty vegetarian chili.

Bread:  I tried bread a handful of times in the past few years, and usually got something edible, but not overly.  I want to find a recipe that works for me and then make it regularly, matching however much bread I eat (which currently isn’t much, but the more soup I make, the more bread I will correspondingly want to have).

Pancakes:  I used to make them often when I was a kid, but I haven’t made them in years.

Biscuits/gravy:  I want to be able to make these on an early morning, knowing what I’m doing but not having to think too hard about it.

Pie:  I’ve made really good pumpkin pie a few times, but no other kind.  And definitely no homemade pie crusts — not sure if I’ll tackle that this winter or not.  But I’d like to add at least one other kind of pie to my repertoire.

Cookies:  I’ve rarely made cookies and I don’t plan to make them often — I just want to know how.  Sugar cookies seem to be what I want to know how to do.  The only successful cookies I can recall making were M&M cookies, which must have been about 35 years ago when I was a young teenager!

Lasagna — Never made it, want to know how.  Again, not that I plan to make it often, but it would be a good thing to make in order to have a week’s worth of “just heat” meals.  And, of course, I won’t be using meat, so I need to find a good vegetarian recipe.

Now, one twist to my cooking projects this winter is that I really want to emphasize non-traditional cooking methods.  Whenever the woodstove’s going, any stovetop cooking I’m doing will probably be done there.  And I’ll be interested in seeing how my solar oven works in the wintertime (it’s still sunny, after all!).  Further, I want to get more familiar with using my electric crockpot to slow-cook things — that way I can cook even on days I’m away working.

I’m not going to make a lot of strict rules about how many of these things I’ll get to, but they are all things I want to do/learn/add to my skills, so I’ll just do as many of them as I can get to.

Side benefits will be less money spent on eating out, more self-reliance, and a reduced chance of letting any of my stored food go to spoilage, once I actually follow the cardinal rule of food storage:  Store What You Eat and Eat What You Store.

Now I better go, because I’m getting hungry.  Let’s see if I can start on one of these projects tonight!

Retract, Regroup, Restart

As recent weeks and months have passed, I’ve noticed that my energy for the various challenges I’m supposedly participating in has evaporated.  Lots of reasons all converging:  extra paid work that is taxing my time, much free time spent getting the winter’s wood in (still ongoing), feeling mentally down (variety of reasons but mostly relationship-oriented), and the fact that my garden is a bust this year, with only potatoes and chard doing well.  I might end up with four or five winter squash total, perhaps four beets, two tomatoes, three jalapenos, one bell pepper.  Time just got away from me and all of a sudden everyone else was harvesting, when I was still looking at seedlings.  As for the blog challenges, they were generally sucking more energy from me in the guilt of all that I’m not doing, than they were enlivening me with the accomplishments I was doing.

And, I realized recently that there are some things — personal paperwork, housekeeping, reading list — that I really would rather be spending my time on at the moment.

So, I’m officially cancelling my participation in just about everything:  Riot for Austerity, Independence Days Challenge, Growing Challenge, etc.  I will of course still have a goal of moving forward with preparations and skills learned for the future, growing and cooking new things, etc.  I just won’t be taking much time to report on it on a regular basis.  Every now and then, yes — every week, no.  And I’m sorry to say that I will probably stop reading many blogs too — my blogroll had gone from ten or fifteen blogs to several dozen on a reader that told me when a new post was made.  I could easily pass the evening online just reading blogs.  While I may still do that now and then, I’m going to try to wean myself from that in favor of time spent on my own projects — sorry, y’all, no offense I hope!

Hopefully this new direction will mean that I occasionally have something to say here other than an IDC report or whining about how tired I am!

Sloth, and a Strategy

I can say it now, out loud even: I am a sloth. Some might say lazy, though in my defense I’d argue that it’s selective laziness – there are certainly lots of examples of accomplishments on my part, including some that distinctly non-lazy people might respect. Some might think it borders on depression, and there might be a grain of truth in that too, but mostly not – I sleep well, I don’t feel overly or inappropriately sad (relationship breakup notwithstanding), I’m interested in lots of things, and I look forward to the future (though, given the current world, not without some trepidation, for sure). My preferred term for my condition is low-energy. And I have always been this way. Always.

As a child it manifested mostly by being a night-owl; I’d stay up late into the evening, reading or making plans or sometimes even cleaning out the closet. In the evening I’d feel high-energy, mentally – rarin’ to go on whatever had my attention at the moment, except for the fact that it was late and I was physically tired. But oh, the enthusiasm! Then, in the morning? Gone. No enthusiasm whatsoever. I wanted nothing more from life than to be able to go back to sleep. It didn’t take me long to learn that when I did sleep late and got up at noon, once I was up, that felt pretty bad too – I usually went straight from “ohhhh, I feel good but SO sleepy, Must.Sleep.More”, to “ugh, I slept way too long, now I not only feel yucky, but the day’s half over and everyone else has accomplished lots of things already!” However, recognizing this did NOT inspire me to just get up earlier instead of going back to sleep. Somehow that magnetic pull of the head back onto the pillow was just irresistable. I even used to set my alarm on weekends, because waking up early and turning off the alarm and going back to sleep was SO much more satisfying than just sleeping later in the first place! I know, I know, wacky, eh? Anyway, what I remember clearly, and still experience sometimes, is the feeling of high mental energy at night, when the physical energy is low, and wishing “why can’t I just carry this good mental feeling over into the morning, so that I can act on it?” But mornings never felt the same. I don’t know why, they just didn’t.

Over the years I trained myself to be less of a night owl, which made a HUGE positive difference in my life. Now, if I stay up “late”, that’s 11pm or midnight, when that used to be “early” for me. And if I sleep in, that’s until 8am or 8:30, not noon. But the general dynamics of low energy have stayed with me. I have to “make” myself exercise; it’s never what I FEEL like doing. And although I have a rather extreme reverence for the natural world, my reverence doesn’t require much of my direct experience – I’m perfectly happy staying indoors all day, reading or computering, working in an office setting, whatever. I know this is contradictory for many people, but it works for me. My reverence for the natural world is because that’s what I believe is right, not because it meets my personal life experience needs. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy hiking and camping, and I absolutely treasure living close to nature on a day-to-day basis. It’s just that it isn’t something I HAVE to do to be satisfied, and there are so many other things I do feel drawn to do, that I don’t end up spending much time in those activities.

So, back to the present: I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed. The changes going on in the world are frightening for me to contemplate dealing with on my own, since I just spent four years preparing to deal with these changes together with another person. And, of course, Peak Oil aside, I’m still dealing with the emotions of the end of a relationship – one that had a stronger hold on my views and my habits than I’d realized. I sometimes feel like I’ve forgotten how to think for myself, or how to make a decision on my own. Now, I realize this might not be all that unusual, and I’m sure I’ll be back to myself before too long. It’s just that I feel like I’m racing the clock to decide how to set up my new life, before options (such as jobs, relocation possibilities, mortgages etc) start being removed from the picture. In addition, I had used my relationship, rather successfully, to help me ward off my low-energy personality, to banish that part of me to a hidden memory – I followed R’s lead in terms of activities, projects, etc. He didn’t work himself too hard day by day, yet he managed to accomplish a lot, and usually in a fairly short time period. His secret was to make some progress every day. Didn’t have to be sunup to sundown nonstop, just whatever one could handle, make progress. I still do use that technique and think it’s a gem.  And it was easy to do when there was someone else doing it alongside you.

But now back on my own, I’ve found that I’ve lost my ability to self-discipline: when I have a free day at home, I might think to myself “oh, I’ll do this, and that, and that, and that…” and not pay attention to what’s realistic. Then when the day comes, I’m not “in the mood” to work on those projects, and I spend the whole day online instead, reading blogs or discussion boards or whatnot. Each time I look at the clock, I say “okay, just one more hour and then I’ll go do XYZ.” I can pass a whole day that way! Or, as I did last Saturday, I go outside, spend 15-20 minutes working on a project, then “reward” myself with a break indoors at the computer. Problem was, I was only working 15-20 minutes for each 1-2 hour break! Not the way to get a whole lot done…

I want to give myself permission to feel lost for a while, permission to grieve for my relationship, permission to feel tired from the stress of that and of the unexpected move, permission to feel afraid for being alone. But I also want to reclaim my ability for self-discipline, and to move myself forward with whatever my current plans are. And I recognize that my current weakness is spending time on the computer. In earlier years it might have been TV or reading or coffeeshops or bookstores. Now, I have no TV reception, and while I’m in the midst of reading several books, not to mention behind on my few subscription magazines, and I’m not so much for hanging out at coffeehouses anymore, and the one bookstore in town holds no more spell over me, my truly addictive weakness now is spending time online. That’s where I fall to, instead of focusing on the things I truly want to focus on.

So I came up with a strategy for my at-home days: no computer between 10am and 4pm.

Now of course the very first thing I did after coming up with this strategy, was to come up with the exceptions to the rule. :) First exception is when I have work-related reasons to be on the computer. Second exception is, if I shut down by 9am instead of 10am, then I can have a lunch-hour check-in from 12-1 (or whenever I stop to eat).

So, today’s “make progress” projects to choose from are: garden beds, garden fence, pruning fruit trees, kitty door, making naan. Other projects I might work on: setting up the solar oven and the food dehydrator, putting the bags of bulk beans/rice into mouseproof buckets. And of course there are daily tasks like doing the dishes, putting away the laundry, a little cleaning, not to mention some generic unpacking/rearranging tasks still left undone.

It’s 9:45 am.  I’ll sign off shortly and be back at 4pm.  Wish me luck!

Who Knew? The Lemon Balm Was Listening…

The day after I posted a “come in” call for the Lemon Balm, it sprouted!  Two little dabs of green rose up overnight.  No such luck with the Ground Cherry — maybe it needs a second pleading here?  Come on,  baby, you can do it!  And let’s hear from some of the other plants that have only sprouted ONE sprout…

Thursday’s Independence Days Challenge actions:

* Growing Food:  I dug *part* of a garden bed, pruned *part* of an apple tree, and *started* to set up a compost pile.  I don’t really want to count things that I only partway do, especially since I have a history of starting what I don’t finish.  But I do want to report the progress.

* Food planning/Eating from storage:  Soaking some *really old* red beans that I’m finally using up.  They’ll go in the crockpot Friday and be dinner, with some rice.

* Eating from storage:  Thursday’s dinner, along with a salad, was baked potatoes and roasted beets, both grown in last year’s garden and root cellared ’til now.  (Hey, if they’re both in the same oven, how can one be baked and the other be roasted?  I guess they’re baked beets then…)

In other news, I’ve taken the next step towards a new part-time summer job that looks like it will see me once again earning more than I’m spending, at least for a few months.  It also has the potential to turn into a full-time job with benefits, etc after the summer, but I’m not sure I want that, so I’m not focusing on that for now — first, I’ll just see how the summer goes and see how I feel about any other opportunities later.  More details once it’s official.

At home, I’ve unpacked a few more boxes, moved around a little more furniture.   A little at a time, pressing myself to keep making small progresses, seems to work best for me, rather than planning an all-out long slog of a day, which I usually end up slothing and not doing.  You could say it’s the same kind of mentality needed for the Independence Days Challenge, which is why I’m hoping that challenge will be a good one for me to participate in.

Good news…

… I found toilet paper growing in the yard!

It’s a bit hard to see in the photo, even after I cleared out some of the dried leaves clinging to it. Here’s a closeup:

That IS lamb’s ears, isn’t it?

:)

Growing Challenge — 3 Steps Forward and 1 Step Back

Three steps forward:  three of my indoor pots have produced seedlings so far:  turnips, mesclun salad mix, and brussels sprouts.  (I guess that means I have a brussels sprout – er, sprout?  :)  I haven’t grown mesclun mix before, so I guess that counts as another Growing Challenge item, though I hadn’t decided to plant it at the time I listed my inclusions.  I’ve grown brussel sprouts before, years ago, and I assume I started them from seed, but I really don’t remember.   Even though it was about 80*F here today, it’s supposed to get cold again in a few days, so I’m glad I’m starting all these guys indoors.  Within a week or two, though, I’ll have to put the turnips in the ground, as they’ll get too big for their pot.  But they’re hardy, so I have hopes that they’ll be ok.  As I mentioned before, I’ll plant some seeds straight in the ground at that time.

Now for the step back:  when I got home this afternoon, I checked in on the kitchen windowsill to see if anyone new had sprouted, and I saw that one of my containers was upside down on the counter and in the sink!  Potting soil everywhere!  Oh no!  It was the container with the dipper gourd seeds.  I think the cat must have been climbing up around there and stepped on the container, which extended out just a bit off the sill, due to the window being open to let a little fresh air in, so…  Darn!  I put all the soil back in the container.  I didn’t see any half-sprouted seeds, either.  I saw one or two seeds that still looked like seeds.  Hopefully they will still sprout ok.  Keeping the cat off the counter is another story though…  I’m pretty sure he was chasing flies — yesterday when it was so nice, I opened up two doors and a screenless window and just kept them open all day, to air out the house on such a nice day!  I hoped the flies etc would fly in and then just fly right on out.  Erm, it didn’t quite work — the house was FULL of flies and mosquitoes!  I’ve been snapping towels at them, catching them in jars to put outside, encouraging the dog and the cat to think of them as toys, anything!  Haven’t noticed any more mosquitoes today, I might have gotten all those, but there’s still lots of flies I haven’t vanquished.  I’d bet anything the flies were hovering in that kitchen window and Bear the cat was ‘only trying to help’ when he stepped on the potted gourd seeds.

OK, I’m over it now.

A Half-Baked Solution

When I moved into the new rental, there was a big ugly yellow desk there — the generic kind you see in offices.  The landlords asked me if I could use it and wanted it left inside; if I didn’t, they’d move it to the (huge) garage for storage.  I said sure, leave it, I can use it.  I’m setting up a “home office” in the living room, and I have only a small wooden desk, so I can use the desktop as organizing space, not to mention a few file drawers.

The problem, once I got my bearings in the house and started to figure out what I wanted where, was that the desk was in this corner of the room and I really wanted it over there.  It was empty, but even so, when I tried to drag it, it wouldn’t budge.  The combination of a heavy and awkward item (it’s one of those L-shaped things, two pieces bolted together) combined with the shag carpet and the lack of foot caps, meant this thing just wouldn’t slide.

I considered my choices:  I could get someone, or a few someones, to help me move it.  I could “buy the solution”:     (these are plastic disks that are slippery on the bottom and grippy on the top — you put one under each foot of the furniture you’re trying to move, and then everything slides around easily) which not only involved spending money and waiting days until the item arrived, but then would mean more plastic “stuff” I’d have to store or give away. 

I also happened to know that an office nearby had some of these, and I considered asking (I used to work there and they know me) if I could borrow them.  But in the end, I found a faster solution:

 

Catching Up…

It’s been a busy several days and before I knew it it’d been nearly a week since I made a post.  I’ll try to recreate what’s been happening here.

MOVING — Last Monday was my first night in the new house.  I spent that day shuttling more things from the schoolhouse, with the last item, as always – the cat.  With a nearly loaded truck, just enough room left for him and his stuff, I put him in his carrier on the porch (finally, he gets to go outside!) for an hour or so while I loaded up his food, litter box, etc., and then swept out the schoolhouse and wiped down the bathroom and kitchen.

I got to the new house and drove into the garage using the handy-dandy electric garage door openers.  Sheesh, talk about non-Riotlike!  I need to ask the landlords if the doors can be opened manually!   But I have found a benefit to the garage — once the door is closed behind me, the garage becomes part of the house, where the animals have free reign.  I carried the cat/carrier into the mud room and opened the carrier door so Bear could start to explore.  The animals wandered around as I unloaded the truck and brought things inside the house.

DOG-FENCE — Although the house includes 40 acres with all sorts of fencing and cross-fencing, it was all fenced for horses or other large animals and would not have held back the dog.  So for several days, the dog was permitted outside only on a leash.  Poor Luna!  She doesn’t like to go potty on a leash, plus she just loves to run around, and she couldn’t!

Some local friends have a fence-building business, and they came out starting on Monday to build me a dog yard.  They had some complications at their house (plumbing emergencies) so it took a little longer than expected, but by Friday afternoon, we had this:

There’s the gate (the gap near the top of the gate will be covered with chicken wire, just in case she thinks she could jump through there), and in the background you can see the fence going up the hill.  That’s a shed on the right, and the fence goes around it and up the hill and across and back down to the house, which is off the photo on the left.  It’s a nice backyard for her, and I can only hope that she stays in it!  I’m a bit worried about when she sees deer, which are abundant here — she goes a bit crazy, and might just make it over (or under, by digging) the fence.  I may add an electric wire for just such circumstances.  Especially since I want to feel secure about leaving her there when I’m away working for eight or nine hours at a time.

WORK — I’ve taken in one freelance proofreading job at the moment, in addition to my usual local work.  It’s been a few weeks since I sent out some outreach letters for (mostly) nonlocal proofreading work, so I’m hoping I might hear back from some of them soon.  I’ve calculated that I need twelve hours per week of proofreading, at my lowest hourly rate, to cover my new expenses.

GARDEN — My garden this year will have two components — first, the orchard.  There are about a dozen trees in the yard here — mostly apple, a few apricot, and rumors of peach and maybe a pear.  I will just have to wait to see what they are!  My role now is to prune them (long overdue) and to see what grows.  Here’s the orchard with the huge house in the background:

And here’s the area that will be my garden (the lower terrace plus however much I want on the upper terrace):

First step there:  deer fence!  And, while it’s still far too early for outdoor planting (the soil was frozen and snow covered most of the yard as recently as last week), I do have room now for indoor starts.  And, I’ve decided to join Melinda’s Growing Challenge (see button over on the right), which involves growing from seed at least one new thing you’ve never grown before.  I haven’t decided what thing or things I will grow, but I have lots of seeds to choose from!

Also, another part of my garden project this year is my friend KH’s efforts in the other fields surrounding the house.  She’s planning on growing a huge garden using the hot well water (stay tuned for descriptions of how she’ll do that, and how well it works).  She’s considering establishing a small CSA, with clients getting a box of whatever’s ripe each week.  She’ll be providing the local restaurants with produce.  And, she’ll be bringing her produce to the local farmer’s market — in fact, she’s working with the manager of the local cafe to set up a second farmer’s market for the valley, one that will be right by the cafe, and not during the workweek.  (The current farmer’s market is 3:30-4:00pm on Fridays, in the hospital lawn which is not right downtown where the visitors usually pass by.)  While this is all KH’s project, I’m very interested in seeing how it works, and maybe working with her, and definitely adopting some of her ideas!

Okay, that’s enough for now — time for dinner and to get started on that proofreading…