Wireless Wednesday (7/8/15)

The raw materials that would become our froggy houses.

Summer time: A time for sleeping late, snacking often, binge watching TV, and playing video games until your thumbs fall off. At least, that’s what our kids seem to think. While all of those things are okay in moderation, we want our kids to understand that there is more to life than molding a perfect butt-groove into the couch cushion; and, since Daddy Maxwell is home with the kids all summer, we have decided to implement Wireless Wednesdays. All TVs, video games, computers, and smart functions on phones are off limits every Wednesday between the hours of 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Instead, we spend our time working on projects, reading, drawing, or using our imaginations to have fun.

Going into our first Wireless Wednesday, we thought that we would have an adolescent rebellion to quell, but it turned out to be a huge success. The kids loved it! Not only do they look forward to next Wireless Wednesday, but they have even been lobbying for Wireless Week. While that sounds like a great idea, it would be nearly impossible to come up with all of the fun activities and projects that they associate with Wireless Wednesday on a daily basis. Instead, we are going to continue on slow and steady, so we don’t burn them out. Besides, the excitement of looking forward to whatever we’re going to do next week is half of the fun.

This week, Daddy Maxwell had an in-service day at school, so Wireless Wednesday had to be postponed. Instead, we had Wireless Thursday. It was worth the wait, however, because we made our very own toad abodes to put into the garden.  We bought a 3-pack of small terra cotta pots for a buck at Dollar Tree and used leftover paints and Sharpies that we had around the house, so this was a very cheap project, but the kids loved it!

Our Little Artist opted for a fun, festive design.

     Our Little Artist’s toad abode

The Evil Genius drew a nature theme.

                The Evil Genius’ toad abode

Our Master Builder painted his in a two-toned with polka dots motif.

                Master Builder’s toad abode.

After finding nice, peaceful spots in the garden to install our new froggy flats, we went on a hunt for new tenants that we could transfer into the neighborhood. Unfortunately, we only found one frog and a handful of slugs.

Our Little Artist took a bit of a liking to the slugs, so they were given a reprieve. We transferred them to the compost far away from the garden. Later in the day, as luck would have it, Daddy Maxwell was able to rescue two more toads before running over them with the lawn mower. So, we added three brand new toad houses to the garden, and we moved three brand new tenants in. Project Toad Abode was a complete success!

Monthly Project: July 2015 – Recycling Recharge

Recycling Recharge

This is our very first monthly sustainability project, so we wanted to start with something fairly small and easily attainable. We decided to go with recycling. Our family already recycles a little bit, but only when it’s very convenient. Up until now, we haven’t started a dedicated recycling program in our home, even though it would be very easy. Our city has partnered with Abilities Unlimited to offer a Blue Bag program. Residents may request a blue trash bag to place their recyclables in. On trash pickup day, we simply place our full blue bag out beside the trash can, and the city will pick it up and leave another empty blue bag. Abilities Unlimited helps with the sorting of recyclable materials and their distribution to the appropriate facilities. They currently accept all aluminum and steel cans; all glass containers; and all plastic containers, as long as the lid opening is smaller than the container.

Today, we spent some time after lunch preparing our recycling receptacle, and we talked to the kids about what can and what can not go into the recycling bag. They seem to be very excited about getting started. Unfortunately, this project isn’t going to yield very many quantitative results that we will be able to share. It will just be running in the background. We will try to provide occasional updates on how it goes. As always, thank you for following us in our attempts at HOMESTEADING THE CITY.

Why We Garden

I have always loved vegetable gardens. For as long as I can remember, my Mamaw and Papaw have kept a large garden in their back yard. There was never any shortage of strawberries, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, beans, peas, or my personal favorite, tomatoes around their house during the summer. Oh, and the okra! Mamaw still fries and freezes enough okra to last the entire year. It is, without a doubt, the best okra that you’ll ever eat! In fact, all of those homegrown vegetables were far tastier than any of their store-bought doppelgangers could have ever dreamed. Looking back, I realize that Mamaw and Papaw weren’t just planting seeds in a garden; they were helping cultivate a set of values in me that would later blossom into a fascination and love of all that nature has to offer.

There are a ton of other childhood memories associated with that garden aside from the edible produce. Just about every fishing trip that I can remember taking as a kid began with a swing by Mamaw and Papaw’s house to dig up worms from their garden. My dad would use a pitch fork to turn over the loose, dark soil; the shovel always tended to leave too many wiggling worm parts in its wake. It was always my job to catch the little red wrigglers before they could bury themselves back under the dirt. We always tried to avoid the giant nightcrawlers, many of which could have passed for small snakes. They had a strong tendency to secrete a sharp stream of slimy yellow mucus the second they anticipated a fish hook. I can recall more than one close call while baiting a hook with my mouth open. They stayed on the hook better, but they definitely weren’t worth the mess.

I remember how on any given night during the summer, it seemed as if we could stop by Mamaw and Papaw’s house and find them snapping green beans or shelling purple hull peas by the 5 gallon buckets full. My sister and I always loved jumping in to help, and I ‘m sure Mamaw and Papaw loved letting us! I especially enjoyed shelling the purple hull peas. I liked the way they stained my fingers. I think that my parents would sometimes visit for an extra long time, just to let us have fun and help. Not only were these great ways to bond as a family; but, in retrospect, I see how much work that it takes to put food on your own table. In today’s society, we walk into a grocery store and walk out with two weeks worth of food without a second thought given to the work that it took to get it there or the impact that it might have made on our environment.

These days, I am blessed to have found a wonderful, Godly woman who shares my interest in trying to be more self-reliant. In fact, Mommy Maxwell may be even more determined than I am. We are awaiting our newest addition to the family, and she has me talked into cloth diapering! It’s going to be a brand new experience for me, so there will definitely be more to come on this particular adventure in baby land in a couple of months.

Well, I had planned on talking about our own garden in this post; however, after a quick read-through of what I have down so far, I have come to realize that I might have gotten a little bit side tracked. Only, by might have, I mean definitely; and by little bit, I mean completely. That’s okay, though. I like what I have down, and I have enjoyed digging into old memories and realizing how those seemingly small things that happened when I was a kid have helped to shape my personal values, today. It has further inspired me to make a more conscious effort to provide the same types of experiences for our children, so that they may grow up with a more healthy perspective on life and nature. We still have lots to share about our garden, so we will probably be posting more about it in the very near future. Thank you for reading, and we hope that you’ll stay with us as we continue Homesteading The City.

Our Purpose

We decided to create this blog for several reason. For starters, we wanted to document our progress in going from house to homestead for our own personal benefit. It will help us get our kids interested and involved in the process, as well as give us a place where we can document the memories, which are a couple of our main goals. It will also be good motivation to keep on keeping on. If we want to push out content, then we will have to be on the constant lookout for new ideas to implement, new projects to try, and new ways to get better at living sustainably. In fact, we’re actually hoping that our readers can help us out in that area. We encourage your comments regarding projects and ideas that we can try, or even ways that we might improve upon our own plans and procedures. Finally, we hope that we may inspire others to take steps, even baby steps, toward becoming more self-sufficient. You may notice that we talk about our kids a lot, but that’s who this is about. It’s not just a legacy that our generation is leaving behind; our children will also have to inherit our impact on the environment. It occurs to me that my kids’ futures will be impacted by the actions of the billions of people all around the world! If I can do anything to convince even just a few to find ways to lessen their environmental footprints, I would be remiss in not trying.

Our plan is to start small. As mentioned in a previous post, we have already taken a few convenient baby steps toward our goal of sustainability, which we will be chronicling in specific categories across the top of the page; and, as we try new things, we will be adding more categories to the list. As for the blog’s layout, all new entries will post to our Main Blog page in reverse chronological order (so, newest posts appear first). In addition, some entries will be double posted if they are applicable to one of the listed categories. This way, you can keep up with everything that is going on with our little homestead project as a whole, or, if you’re interested in seeing how a specific project has progressed, you can go directly to that page and skip over unrelated posts. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to avoid a few mistakes after seeing our trials and errors. Whatever your reasons for reading, we appreciate you visiting our blog, and we look forward to all of the adventures that we are going to have while Homesteading The City.

Beginning The Journey

Self sufficiency. It’s a concept that my wife and I have been thinking a lot about, lately.  Why do we spend all of our time working for money, just so we can hand it over to the grocery store? Or to the water company? Or to the electric company? How much happier would we be if we spent more of that time working together as a family to provide for our own needs? We are in agreement that a more self-reliant lifestyle would be a much more fulfilling lifestyle for us.  Not only would it encourage a more tight-knit family, but it would provide our kids with valuable lessons and insights that would benefit them for a lifetime. Moreover, sustainable living would greatly reduce our family’s footprint on the environment, a behavior that my wife and I feel is important to model for our kids while they are young, so that they will understand their impact on the Earth when they grow up.

We are the Maxwell family. A husband, a wife, a son, and two daughters, with another daughter on the way. We live in a fairly large (for Arkansas) city of roughly 70,000 people in a neighborhood about five minutes from downtown. Together, we have taken a few baby steps toward a more self sufficient existence, but they have only been easy, convenient steps. We grow an (mostly) organic garden. We compost our yard and kitchen waste. We make an effort to recycle when it is convenient. We want to do more. We do have a large fenced in back yard; so, even though we are well within the city limits, our little homestead-to-be has lots of potential, and we would like to invite you on our little journey to make the most that potential, while we attempt to learn the ins and outs of Homesteading In The City.