I know you’ve been wondering “where in the world have yall been?” It’s been quite a while since our last post, but I just wanted to let you all know that we are still alive and kicking. Since our last post about regrowing green onions, a lot has happened (and not happened), so let’s hop to it.
The Journey
The journey to our homestead has proven to be pretty challenging. Since we acquired our property, we have had challenges at every turn. From having a utility pole in our easement to learning early on about what you can and cannot do with your driveway on state maintained roads, it has definitely been a true journey. However, it has been one full of learning along the way!
Once we got a driveway created on the other side of our property last fall, we finally could access it and get equipment there. The problem was that we had trouble with our truck (Willie), which we needed to tow our tractor (Herman) out to mow the pasture area. The truck had electrical issues and the transmission kept getting stuck in reverse. This had us in a limbo, but we finally were able to get out the property last Thursday (4/18/2019) to do some bush hogging! There will be more pictures with the tractor in another post coming soon!
Otherwise, we are still working towards building our dream and moving out to the property. It is definitely a work in progress, but we are staying the course and moving as the Lord leads us.
Health
I don’t know how much you remember, but my wife is a two-time – count that 1…2 – kidney transplant recipient (she talked about this in a blog last year about illness on the homestead). Well, last year was a pretty busy year for her and the emergency rooms, but we think we finally figured out the problem.
Her first transplanted and failed kidney started to give her issues. It started to reject again and cause her pain, so we thought that she was going to have surgery this month to have it removed. Well, it turned out we thought wrong and the doctors kind of left us both in confusion. We had many irons in the fire when this first started, but we had put everything on the back burner. We had the expectation of something big about to happen because any time you have to go under the knife, it is a big deal. Well, I won’t go into details as Deidra may want to tell her own story, but in short she still has the kidney and the surgeons are refusing to operate!!!
It was and still is very frustrating, but we have to pick back up on our journey and other projects until we can figure this thing out. We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.
Gardening
When the late fall and winter hit in 2018, we stopped gardening outside. We probably could have kept going in our planters, but I opted to stop. The good thing is that we have a small flood & drain hydroponic set up. I didn’t get started on it in the time frame that I wanted, but I got to grow a few things. We put in some lettuce, pak choy, spinach, and a few green onions.
I kind of cheated, but we purchased three living lettuces from the grocery store that were hydroponically grown. Well, the wife said, “why don’t you toss them out into the system” and that’s what I did. In addition, I grew some butter crunch lettuce from seed as well. Needless to say, we are still eating on lettuce, but it looks like it is starting to bolt now.
For the pak choy and spinach, I grew them from seed as well, but the pak choy plant is sensitive. It grew some nice pretty leaves, but they ended up bolting long before I was ready. I guess I must have stressed it some how. Oh and the spinach is still growing now and is starting to get pretty big.
Last we have the green onions. Well, that’s one of those plants that are easy to regrow, so after purchasing some for a meal, I tossed them into the hydroponic system to regrow. The ones that we didn’t use, I tossed in there just to keep alive and now we have that going too. Below is an Instagram post where we harvested lettuce for dinner one night.
For more pictures and videos of our hydroponic system over the past few months, be sure to check out our Instagram page at @jphomestead and while you there be sure to click that follow button!
The Kiddos
The last time we hit the pause button on our blog, it was during about the same time last year. Both of our kids swim year round and it keeps us going, but from December 2018 until now, it has has been ridiculously crazy. Rather than retype it all, I will share a Facebook post that my wife made on March 25th of this year:
I realized I hadn’t posted much about the kids’ swim adventures….get ready for a long story! I’m going to try to give the finer points and not go into a bunch of details though.
Our kids helped make HISTORY in our area! It all started when the swim team we were with got messy and fired the kids’ coach. It was DEVASTATING. Lots of tears from the kids and anger from the parents behind that one since it was kind of bogus. But anyway….
We already knew that if he went, we went. To be truthful, he was really the only reason we were staying with the team. A few other parents felt the same way. We approached him with a proposal – start your own team! We stuck around with the other team for a while as we also considered other options. Each day was getting increasingly harder than the previous in getting motivated to go to practices and the kids were not performing well at meets. It was just no longer being what we needed. Long story short – the coach formed his unattached/unofficial team! And first day, we were there!
Now, here’s the “history” part. He is THE FIRST “under 30”, black, and male coach to have his OWN team in our area!! And he has been kickin butt and taking names on the deck!
In just under three months our unofficial “team” of first 5 and now 6, has:
1. Qualified for State Championships (Our son was on the Champs team)
2. Qualified, finaled and PLACED for Sectionals in ATL (Our son once again.
3. Getting listed with NC Swim as having a top 10 swimmer (boy-child) which is great – not b/c he’s our son, but because the TEAM is being recognized
3. Each competition our kids (team) performed and dropped time
4. Just last night, rounded out the season with our final meet with everyone that swam competing and making it to finals among other fast teams. (This only being our daughter’s second time!!)Why is this important? Because our kids had gone through SO much – the firing of their coach they LOVED, the tension of leaving teammates and some of the reactions (the first day was NOT pretty – the other kids/parents/coaches did NOT handle this well), not having a consistent schedule (he had to find pool space and times where he could – that included 5:30am practices and sometimes late night 8pm practices, practices on Sunday…you name it. Where there was a pool with an opening, we took it), practicing in facilities that were not set up for competition swim, not having a consistent “home” to swim, having a young coach who had to figure out a plan for a viable business on a whim while still holding his coaching duties to the kids….
Now, compare that to these established teams with an established coaching staff, budget, place to swim….these kids and their coach are AWESOME! THEY DID IT!!
I could not be more proud of them. I look forward to sharing more on their successes!! In and out of the pool
Deidra
Shew!!! We have been gone, but when I tell you life has been moving at 100mph – life has been moving at 100mph!! Sorry, for the long post, but just wanted to catch you up. Hopefully, we can get ourselves back into a rhythm of posting and do a better job of managing life/adulting.
Take care folks!