School Update: Agriculture

Sometime in the fall, we planted green beans and carrots.  They beans were growing well, and the carrots were growing oh so very slowly.  Then we had quite a bit of cold weather—and a premature baby – so I did absolutely nothing to protect the plants in any way from the freezing night temperatures.

I knew the carrots would be ok, but the remaining tomato and pepper plants were definitely goners!  The green beans looked pretty wilted too, so sometime in December I told the kids to go pull up everything except the carrots.  They did, but then discovered that the green bean plants were covered with ripe beans, undamaged by the many freezing nights!  They carefully picked them all and we had a couple of meals of yummy fresh garden green beans.

On a mild, spring-like January day, we enjoyed some fresh air and sunshine…and a bit of playing in the dirt.

Elaine had the freedom to dig as she pleased…

 

And Travis built an elaborate series of canals…

Two weeks later on February 6, we had snow and sleet and ice …

A week after that, we pulled up some of the carrots.  I was quite surprised at how big they were.  Some were as big around as a quarter at the top and 3-4 inches long.  Most of the carrots ended up in our stew and the tops made a friend’s guinea pig very happy.

 

Just a couple of weeks later we got some grape tomato transplants and some green bean seeds. We planted the same kind bush bean seeds that grew so well last year, and also decided to experiment with some pole beans (Kentucky wonder beans).   Another experiment was to plant some 1015 onion transplants and some red onion seeds.  About a week after planting, on March 11, 2014 here’s what it looked like…

About three weeks later, on April 4, 2014…

And two weeks after that, on April 19, 2014 (about 6 weeks of very mild, sometimes even cold, weather after planting), we had this…

 

I noticed that not very many of the bush beans sprouted.  I’m not sure why.  It was a brand new package of seeds.  Other the fence side of the tomatoes,  where I planted the bush beans I found seven or eight of these…

 

NOT beans, but SQUASH! Now, I know the difference between bean seeds and squash seeds. I definitely planted beans! I’m guessing these sprouted from the kitchen scraps I threw in the compost bin. I pulled them up because I didn’t really want them growing in that location and didn’t want them to steal nutrients from my tomatoes.

Since the pole beans were doing well, I planted some more on April 19.

On May 12, 2014, 2 months after planting, we picked our first few tomatoes and beans.  Well, actually, I think some birds got the very first tomatoes … we found several with big holes in them.  Maybe caterpillars, but I suspect birds.  So, we’ve been picking them when they start to turn orange and they ripen inside in just a day or two.

 

By May 22, 2014, we were picking 3-5 tomatoes a day…

 

… with LOTS and LOTS of green ones still in there!!

By May 24, we picked this whole pie plate full of them in one day!

The next day we got another pie plate full! 

This was our second bowl full of beans.   Some of these ended up in a pot for our supper on Saturday; the rest of them, plus all the ripe tomatoes from above went into a big batch of minestrone that I cooked for Sunday.

 

Our red onions never did sprout.  I thought maybe I picked a bad spot without enough sun after the tomato and green bean plants got too big.  So I planted some more in a more open spot in April.  But they still never did sprout.

Our 10-15 onions grew some.  One grew up tall and developed a flower on top.  I’ve left it just to see what happens.  We’ve picked several of the others when the tops started to turn brown.  They were quite small, but yummy!  And the green tops were nice on some baked potatoes we had last week!

I am very glad to not have to buy tomatoes at the store now for a while.  And I enjoy going out in the evenings sometimes after supper … alone… and getting a few minutes of quiet to refresh my spirit and my ears after a long noisy day with the kids.

School Update: Home Economics or “Life Skills”

Though not typically considered a “school” subject, I think housekeeping skills are a very important part of my children’s education.

Some time ago, out of pure necessity, I started requiring the kids to help out in the kitchen and do other chores around the house.  I simply can’t do it all myself.  And of course, they need to learn to take responsibility and learn to do these kinds of things.

Over the years, I have added jobs a little bit at a time.  As they get used to one or two jobs, then we add more.

Kitchen chores

A few months ago I created a chart to hang on the fridge with the schedule of kitchen chores for each day, divided evenly among the oldest 4 kids.  I rotate the jobs so no one gets stuck doing the same job all the time and so that they all learn to do all the jobs.

Their rotating kitchen jobs include empting the dishwasher (divided into top, bottom and silverware), pouring water cups, pouring milk cups, setting the table, wiping the table, and sweeping the floor.

They are all expected to clear their own dishes plus 2 or 3 other things, make their beds, fold their own clothes, and brush their teeth.  We are still working on doing these things without having to be told…

 

 

Jobs for Hire

I also recently started using an app on my tablet computer that lets me award stars for extra work (such as dusting, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, taking out the trash, helping with meal prep, changing laundry loads, etc.)  They can trade in the stars for prizes or money.  This can help them learn to manage their money and make cost/benefit decisions.

House cleaning

We started a game called “10-minute pickup”.  I set a timer for 10 minutes and we race around the house trying to get all the toys picked up and put away in their proper places before the timer beeps.  Sometimes the reward is dessert.  Sometimes it is extra stars.  It is really amazing how much we can do in just 10 minutes.  And often, they have finished in only 5 or 6 minutes!

Since that game went over well, I decided to try another called “1 hour house cleaning”.  I divided up the vacuuming, mopping, dusting, and bathroom jobs among the 5 of us.  We are still in training on some of the jobs, but so far I am pleased with the results. Two weeks in a row we have gotten the vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms, and some dusting done in just one hour.  I plan to keep the same job assignments for a month or two to allow them to develop some proficiency at each job before moving on to learning new jobs.

Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping

Several years ago, I tried a system of planning meals and shopping for a month at a time.  I didn’t keep up with the shopping part for very long, but I did continue to plan meals for 3-5 weeks at a time.  I bought this magnetic white board with a calendar grid already printed on it and hung it on the fridge.  Then I made magnet labels with all my routine main meals and side dishes.  That allowed me to plan the menus without having to write or erase or try to remember all the options in my poor old brain.

After a while, I slipped back into planning meals only a week in advance – just before my weekly grocery shopping trip.  But adding a new baby complicates the shopping schedule , so I decided to see what I could do to reduce the amount of time I spend at the store.

I reworked my monthly menu schedule (it’s actually a six week rotation).  I assigned each day of the week a category of food:

• Sunday – soup with bread and fruit
• Monday – chicken
• Tuesday – Beans
• Wednesday – Pizza
• Thursday – Beef/Ground Turkey
• Friday – Breakfast (a long standing tradition!)
• Saturday – Fish

Then I assigned a main dish in each category for each week.  This gives me a working plan – and I try to stick to it for the most part, but it also gives me flexibility to switch things around to different days according to the needs of our schedule.  For instance, if I am going to be out most of the day, I can make sure I have something really simple on the schedule for that night.

I do soup on Sundays so that I can mix it up in the crockpot on Saturday night and let it cook while we are at church.  Then it is ready immediately when we get home from church – very helpful when we have Awana on Sunday nights which makes Sunday afternoons very short.

As much as possible, I try to make double batches of recipes and freeze some for use on a busy night or to take to people who need a meal.

I also made up a cheat sheet for each week’s recipes.  I know how to make them all without instructions but I needed a  listing of the ingredients and amounts so I don’t have to look up recipes in various books.  I taped the cheat sheets inside one of my kitchen cabinets.

My goal is one big shopping once every 4-6 weeks, then just get perishable things like dairy and produce on the other weeks.  Theoretically that would make most of my trips fairly quick (i.e. in less time than it takes Curtis to miss me).  It also allows me to sometimes ask Ronnie to go shopping on his way home from work.

The first time I went shopping for this menu cycle, I WAY over estimated how much I needed of some things, so it lasted longer than I anticipated.  I also added into the mix shopping at Costco, so I’m still tweaking my shopping schedule to try to accomplish my goals.

Well, that may be more than you really wanted to know… but that’s a glimpse into our life! :-)