Rockstar mama - Lacey just after giving birth! Beautiful!

Nana (Lacey’s mom) and her new grandson, Malachi!

Alas, its one of those things we are all okay with letting go a bit, lol. Our neighboring Evergreen community house, who so far hasn’t decided on a name but they might settle on The White House, so for now, that’s what I’ll call them (previously the Davison’s home) were obliging young ladies to bring us over some of their lettuces the other night and we graciously paid them in chocolate chip cookies because we don’t have much to trade yet. Even the chickens have been pretty slow goin’ this year.

But I am happy to report that we do have SOME fruits of our labor to pick recently. Some strawberries that were already growing when we moved in are blessing us with a handful of small berries each day, plus a bootie load of herbs we planted back in March.

Well, here, I’ll just walk you through it:

SEE OUR CARROTS SPROUTING UP! CUTE, AREN’T THEY???

Here is a picture of our baby daughter Verity (6wks!) today with our midwife/naturopathic doctor that we LOVE:

The veggie beds are about 75% complete as we get the old clayish, garbage ridden dirt out and replaced with new topsoil/compost mix.  We dug down about 18 in. and built up another 12 in. wall, placed some weed guard down and now we’re in the process of filling it up!  Hopefully by next weekend we’ll have our patient little tomatoe starts in.

Before the new fill dirt was put in

We may have a monopoly of tomatoes this year, but we’re thinking it will be a great crop to barter and trade with at the end of the growing season!  So if you’re in the area, and have a garden (natural, organic veggies are prefered!)  we’d love to trade up a few veggies for a bushel of ours!  We also have our herb garden out front which is really flourishing!  Not to mention the many wonderful flowers and strawberry plants that were here already!  Our place is truly beautiful and we all love spending time outdoors!

So yesterday at 3:43 p.m., Verity Rene was born in The O’s floor shower. She was 8lbs and 20 inches.

What an experience to watch and help my wife endure 13.5 hrs of labor. I was able to catch my perfect daughter and cut her cord.  WOW!

This will make the  7th Kentonian in the house!

Today, I am grateful for my wife’s strength during labor. For being able to have our daughter at home which was a blessing for us. For being a part of a great Evergreen community and especially our Kenton House Community.

He is faithful.

Our food usually begins with a morning of eggs (from the chickens) and fresh chopped organic veggies (although I’ve had an aversion to eggs for the last few weeks of my pregnancy). That’s usually paired with a kefir shake of homebrewed kefir, frozen organic fruit, raw honey, and an egg yolk. Snacks and lunches happen kinda spontaneously, from left overs or trips to a coffee shop or what not. Dinners are flexible too, but about 4 nights out of the week we pre-plan a little sumthin sumthin and make enough to share with the house of 6-going-on-8 individuals. Some dinner highlights might include:

• Wild Local Mushroom and Nettle Soup a.k.a. Forager’s Soup
• Lamb (local farm) and Asparagus Stew (for Easter)
• Homemade Gourmet Pizzas (last week’s variety featured three kinds: Sausage/Mushroom/Pepper w/ Asiago+Chedder, Elk Meat Fajita Pizza, Goat Cheese/Pear/White Garlic Sauce pizza)
• Thai Coconut Chicken Curry Soup w/ rosemary bread
• Sprouted Lentil and Potato Stew
• … along with popular sides like soaked black beans and rice, salads, so on. As you can tell, we do stew/soup/one-pot-meals often

Desserts around here aren’t always as unique, and waaaaay to often come in the form of gooey warm cookies from the Immaculate Baking Company, who we have single-handedly helped through the tough economy with the obscene frequency of our purchases. Mmmm… Otherwise, we have managed to whip out things like: Black Bean Brownies (Lacey’s staple brownies), Coconut Oil Brownies (Vivian’s staple brownies), a few batches of Carrot Souffle, strawberries and fresh cream on homemade shortbread, Chocolate Beet Torte, Cocoa Short Bread cookies, so on.

There’s been a bit of bread making with more on the way, by Lacey, and I took my turn at some Herbed Apple Chedder scones this week too.

Drinks around here include lots and lots of: homemade Kombucha tea, homemade Kefir, raw local milk, red wine, beer, coffee (Sleepy Monk), tea (…tea …and more tea), and occasionally a glass of water.

SO, are you hungry yet? If not, maybe these pictures will help you:

Now, let’s talk about HOW we can eat like “traditional nutrition” divas without exploding the bank accounts. It’s a lesson we are learning along the way, but includes a few resourceful avenues.

Produce: We get 95% of our produce from Organics to You, an organic delivery service that collects the majority of its produce from local farms, brings to your doorstep, and takes the check you leave under the mat. Wa-la. We began ordering a “Value Bin” every week, at $60 a bin, and taking turns as families to pay for every other week. We found that we had MORE than enough and couldn’t use it all up, so we switched to every other week delivery of the bins, costing us only $120 a month ($60 per household) and we are just super resourceful about storage and use. Ripe fruits are often cut up and frozen for kefir shakes, veggies are chopped and stored in a container in the fridge and thrown into eggs, soups, salads, pizzas, etc by the handful. Should we run out of something, like we need an extra onion or more apples and bananas, then we get what’s on sale at New Seasons or People’s Co-op throughout the week. This has been a proven system thus far and provided us with tons of fresh organic, mostly local produce all month. And when we get our veggie beds running, we plan to cut back to the smaller bin, saving us even more.

Meat: meat is only purchased through local sources if possible, and on sale or at the farmer’s market (or directly from the farm). We don’t use meats in every meal and often spread it out into several dishes, even cooking down bones for stock, etc. Meat is purchased by the person cooking it, rather than an even split, so it is based more on what our household pocket books would like to spare at the time.

Milk: we go through a few gallons of milk a week, 95% of which is brewed for kefir. Our milk is farm-direct from Kookoolan Farms, is raw and whole and the tastiest damn milk you’ll ever drink. I am lactose-intolerant, but the raw has been extremely gentle to my system and the kefir has done me wonders. I’m a big fan. Eventually, we hope to make butter and cheeses from our milk as well.

The rest of it: As we are finally settling into a food routine, we are weaning ourselves more and more from the notorious grocery store trip, where things just sort of jump into your cart, be they sticky buns, beer, or kiwis. The best step towards reworking this habit is FINALLY HERE!!! We got our FIRST bulk order in from Azure Standard this morning! Woo hoo! Each family set aside grocery money to purchase regular staples in bulk quantity. We got nearly 500 pounds worth of food this way, including: raw local honey, organic peanut butter, organic quinoa/lentils/rolled oats/ beans, organic chicken/rabbit feed, nutritional yeast, organic unrefined coconut oil, organic whole wheat flour, sea salt, organic cocoa powder, baking soda, turbinado sugar, so on. If your familiar with items like this, you know that this is NOT cheap in the grocery store. We got everything for an average of $1.50 per pound. That’s right. Insane savings, likely around $300 dollars over the next few months. We are storing these large quantities in the basement in food grade buckets we purchased used on Craigslist for $2 a piece and cleaned out in the sunshine just today.
Here are some pics for proof!

In all, the families hope to survive the summer with a food budget roughly $75-100 less than we were spending in single household dwellings by sharing costs and meals and purchasing bulk. May the good Lord bless us with an abundance of veggies in the backyard at harvest time!

I guess that’s the story, the beginning of it anyway…

I’m about to add the sixth (I meant eighth, boy I am TOO pregnant!) addition to our community house (if you include kitty ) in the form of a teeny weeny (?) person named Verity. She’s due in 19 days, and we celebrated her upcoming arrival on Sunday with some friends and goodies in more of a house-warming kinda way.

I must say, I never quite connected with the cliche “home, sweet home” until this month. There are so many things about living here with the Holbert’s that are just plain ol’ sweet. (I’ve captured a few of these sweet, homemade moments on ye ol’ digital cam.) And without further adieu, I share them via slideshow:

I wont lie.  It’s been chaotic.  2 toddlers, 2 pregnant women, 2 working husbands and one very freaked out cat who has managed to escape 3 times already.  I have to say though, I was incredibly impressed with Vivians agility skills at 8 months pregnant.  She lunged for the cat and caught it among bushes with lightning quick reflexes.  Its a handy thing to have a spry roomie.  Seth has discovered that the small space between the front steps and the house is a great place to fall and get poked with a poorly placed rose bush.  The kiddos have managed to get by without so much as a scratch or bump yet, just lots of yelling and claiming items as theirs.

My favorite conversation between them went something like this.

Ethan, ‘I just need my space right now, Caleb!’

Caleb,’ Don’t talk-a-me no more!’

Ethan,’ Mom!  Caleb wont give me any space!’

Caleb,’ MOM!! Tefan (Ethan) no TALK A ME NANYMO!!’

This was towards the end of a 3 1/2 hour car ride to pick up an island for the kitchen that ended up being a rather shabby monster cupboard on wheels that didn’t fit in the back of the subaru without the hatch being bungied which exposed us all to exhaust fumes.  I’m sure that it added to the delirium and eventual hysteria of both Vivian and I.

I believe we both starting laughing uncontrollably at some point, turning up the music and drowning them out while we both were painfully aware that it had been 3 1/2 hours since either of us had been able to pee.  Not a big deal for most, but a big deal for 2 pregnant women.

We’ve also had some very sweet times already.  Enjoying meals around the coffee table in the evening, joking and putting our feet up after an exhausting day of playing musical boxes.  Sharing the morning chores of chicken feeding, collecting eggs, composting, making breakfast and dishes.  I have to say, we’re going to eat well!  It’s alot easier to make food for 6 and switch off duty of cooking and kitchen cleaning.

Vivian and I just put up our first communal batch of homebrewed kombucha and juice.  We’re all (except for Seth, who has yet to develop a taste for it) waiting patiently for it to reach that fizzy perfection.  The combination of kombucha, raw milk and lots of good veggies from our first shared CSA should help all of our digestion get back on track.  Until then, we’ve been burning lots of incense.

Sensing that too many of us were having bowel problems from lack of a homemade balanced meal, I made a large crock pot of chicken and quinoa stew and some sourdough bread and butter last night, in some ways our “first supper”. Chickens are acclimating beautifully to the new digs, they seem pretty darn happy and are laying two eggs a day in this weather (I plan to find out which hen ISN’T laying and have a little tête-à-tête with her ) Paz spent his first night here last night, mostly hanging in the laundry room windows watching cars go by. And getting sprayed in the face with rosemary water when he tried to come in our bedroom (which has no door… it’s built more like a common room, or something, odd…) Chris and I go back tomorrow, his day off, to the old place for hours of cleaning and painting. A walk-through on Friday turns in our keys and we are officially OUTTA THERE! There are so SO many things I will miss about our first Portland place and its surrounding location- but where one chapter ends, so another begins…

The H family spent their first night last night, which consisted of poor sleep on a half blown up air mattress! After a start of their moving week that included numerous freak car problems, (I’ll let them share that story if they chose to!), I’m really hoping for their sake they can get their comfortable bed to their new room soon!

The neighborhood seems really friendly when Ethan and I take our walks. And we’ve scored a close location to walk to a great coffee shop called North Star that serves Stumptown coffee and the most dense, chocolatey, amazing brownies ever. Oh and tasty coffee cake half the size of my head. Several homes have veg beds in the area, and though I haven’t noticed any chicken coops, we did realize that we share one side of our fence with our neighbors and their 1-2 goats! Gotta love urban homesteading!

I feel like I kinda missed an “intentional community” moment the other day, when walking on the sidewalk between a late 20-something guy with a long, blond, braided ponytail and beard who was out gardening in his veg beds. He was taking a break, leaning against his fence having a friendly neighborly chat with an elderly man out in a “walk” in his wheel chair. They were super friendly (I’m saying friendly way too much but hey, this isn’t an essay!), and they got a kick out of Ethan and tried to chat with us. I was totally unsure how to react and completely failed to introduce myself and get to know them. Arg! This intentional community thing is hard for a shy girl! (Yes, that’s right; I might be talkative, but I too can be VERY shy about things like this.)

Well, more opportunities will come, I’m sure. I’ll walk by that house almost daily so I’m sure I’ll have a chance to connect again. Chris says Lacey and I should make some baked goods to bring to all our neighbors. Hmm… it sounds a little too Wisteria Lane for me, but it could work!

On a more physical level though, preparation to live in community means…. simplifying!  There is only so much space, only so much room for 2 families’ accumulation of stuff!  I have to admit though, I get a bit of a high posting things for free on Craigslist and seeing my posessions dwindle to 1/2 the amount of furniture I had at the beginning of the week.  Seth may come home tomorrow to find me sitting on the living room floor staring at the wall…. He’s actually a bit worried because within 3 hours I had gotten rid of our couch, and was calling him several times a day wondering how attached he was to his music equipment….

Begin moving in March 1st!