I had a goal to make my own bread for a long time. But I was never motivated enough to bake it regularly until I put it on my chore rotation. I bake two loaves about once a week, which is perfect for our family. Now we rarely buy bread, and I enjoy eating homemade bread consistently, as well as having it a main portion of my children’s diet. I grind my own wheat as well, using white wheat which I like much better than traditional hard red wheat.

I use my mom’s recipie, that I’ve modified to fit my own mixer and tastes. It is very simple and I have good results with it.

Whole Wheat Bread

Recipe yields two large loaves

• 3 cups warm water
• 2 tablespoons yeast
• 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
• 8ish+ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup oil

Grind flour if not already done. Combine warm water and yeast. Add wheat gluten and 3 cups of flour in a mixer with a good dough hook. Add remaining ingredients. Gradually add flour until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. Turn mixer on medium high and allow to knead for 6 minutes. Divide dough into two parts, and form into loaf shapes. Place in bread pans. Preheat oven to 350. When oven is heated and dough is risen (I allow the bread to rise the same time it takes to heat the over), bake bread for 30 minutes.

I love making bread, not only because it is delicious, but because it was a goal I wanted to do and have now met. I didn’t reach my goal for a long time, but eventually I figured out a system that worked for me. It reminds me that if I give myself time and just keep trying other goals that I have will become realities.

I don’t have any large deciduous trees on my property, so fall leaf clean-up isn’t an issue for me. But I wish it was. Leaves are valuable! I cringe when I see leaves thrown away in regular garbage (green waste is okay if you have to). Why? Well, because they are free organic matter. And organic matter is key to good soils and gardens.

How to you transform fall leaves into good soil? Here are some ideas for using them:

1)Mow. The year I did landscaping for a condo HOA, I raked only a small section of leaves. For the most part, I’d shred them up with the mower and leave them. I did it about three different times, so I never had over a couple of inches of leaves on the ground at any one time. The leaves nicely decomposed in the ground. It was super easy. This works really well for fine leaved trees like honeylocust (sometimes you don’t even have to mow those), but will also work with the thicker leaves like maples as long as you don’t let the leaves get too thick.

2)Mulch. This year, I piled the leaves nice and high around some spireas. I needed mulch there, and fall leaves are free. It also would work well in sheet mulching to smother lawn and other weeds.

3)Compost. Leaves can be added to a compost pile. They would act as a high-carbon or brown type of compost and should be combined with a bit of something high in nitrogen like manure, kitchen scraps or green material if you want ideal compost. (Although compost doesn’t ever have to be perfect.)

4)Annual Garden. This is probably the most common use I see: adding a nice layer of leaves to the garden. Most people till it in, which could be done in the spring or fall, but it doesn’t have to be. It would work well with a no-till garden by just leaving the leaves there and using them as mulch in the spring. The only caution is if you do till a large amount of leaves in, the high-carbon can eat up the nitrogen in the soil. Don’t do a large amount right before planting, or if you do make sure there is an additional source of nitrogen.

One of my actual fears in life is at some point I’m going to have a lot of leaves and some kind person will feel the need to rake them up and haul them away for me. I love leaves and firmly believe that they are far too valuable to end up in the trash!

We live in an old house, so it is no surprise that the floor plan is a bit hard to work with. The living area is great and I’m happy with it. The bedrooms are rather interesting. With young children, I like to be able to sleep near enough that I can hear them in the night. It took us a while to figure out how to do that. Here is the current arrangement:

The main floor has pretty much stayed the same since we moved in. We used a bedroom off the front room for a playroom, and I love having it there.

When we first moved in, we used the downstairs family room as a master bedroom, with the kids in the bedroom one. Bedroom three is very small and was unfinished, so it became our closet. The attic room was our school room, where I set up all our school activities and other toys. It worked, but the family room just didn’t make a very good bedroom.

The downstairs family room was converted to the school room, where it remains. We moved the master bedroom upstairs to the attic room. It was a lovely bedroom but had several fatal flaws. Attics get hot in the summer. The nearest bathroom was down a flight of steep stairs (and I became pregnant). We were also two flights of stairs from our kids. Although they generally slept through the night, we still used a baby monitor and occasionally had to go down two flights to comfort a child.

Now, the master bedroom is in bedroom one. We moved the boys to bedroom two, and have been working on finishing up bedroom number three for a nursery when the new baby comes. It is not perfect. All of the bedrooms downstairs are pretty tiny, but it works. Eventually when the kids are older they will probably move up to the attic room and have more space. (The room is currently a guest room and place to put everything that doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It isn’t used much.)

We ended up moving a lot of furniture in the process. I’m glad my husband has put up with all my requests to occasionally move a large bed up or down two flights of stairs.

I always wanted chickens, they just seemed like a useful pet. I haven’t been disappointed either. I recently read an article about food waste, and didn’t feel guilty in the slightest. We’ve basically eliminated all our food waste by having chickens. I keep a bucket in my kitchen for all the food scraps. If we don’t eat it, the chickens usually do. We even gave them the mouse that we trapped after it came in our house. In return the chickens give us the obvious eggs. But they also process compost, adding fertility with their manure, and do a great job of weeding and prepping soil.

We have seven chickens. Three are currently in full production, and the other four are just starting. They will lay anywhere from 2-5 eggs a day right now. We still occasionally have to buy store bought eggs to keep up with how much we eat. but I don’t like to. Regular eggs at the store are not expensive. If I were do do a purely economical analysis, I doubt the eggs I get from my chickens would be cheaper. So why do I like my own eggs better? I find a lot of satisfaction in getting fresh eggs from chickens I’ve raises, and know I’m not dependent on the grocery store. More importantly, the eggs are different. I don’t notice a huge difference in taste, but store bought eggs look sickly compared to the eggs from my pastured chickens. Here’s an example:

I was frying eggs and used a few from the store and a few from our own chickens. The ones from our chickens (if you didn’t guess) have orange yolks. The deeper color comes from a more varied diet that includes our table scraps, bugs, and greens in the field. The varied diet is transforming into better nutrition in my eggs. I don’t think of egg yolks as yellow anymore: they are properly orange.

In the downstairs family room, I’ve set up a school room where I do preschool with my two boys, along with a co-op group once a week. I love doing preschool activities. When I was considering signing my older son up for a formal preschool, I decided not to in large part because I love doing preschool with him.

Last week, I set up a store for the kids to play in. I think I liked creating it as much as they liked playing in it. (They did like to play in it too.) It wasn’t anything fancy, just some dollar store items and quickly made signs.

We like having our school room downstairs and we play in there at least every morning. I rotate out the toys and activities that are available there. The kids usually pick what they want to do. My oldest loves worksheets, and the toddler loves play-dough. I love being able to pretend I’m a kid again too and enjoy the slipperiness of slime or re-learning about the parts of a plant.