10-4-09 Baby Guinea Pig born yesterday! :)

Sleep:
up at about 7:30am,
to sleep for night before at about 9pm (was sleepy)
to sleep for night tonight at about 8pm (will get up at 3am tomorrow)

Food:
breakfast: bananas
lunch: bananas
dinner: tahini-lemon-tomato juice dip for tomatoes, celery, cuke rounds

Exercise:
before breakfast: ~ 18 minutes of barefoot running on treadmill, including warm-up/cool-down walking - ran about 1.1 miles this time (still training my skin for barefoot running) and it's going well! :) Only slight hint of possible blister forming, but didn't. I stopped before it got questionable 'cause I'd already gone farther than I had planned. Nice.

I also did 20 minutes of the almost bounce sort of thing on the rebounder after that. I watched the guinea pigs and rabbit the whole time walking, running, walking and bouncing. So cute! :)

before lunch: a little over an hour of beginner Ashtanga yoga with a Richard Freedman video I have: Introduction to Ashtanga, Complete Practice Session. It worked out well 'cause we didn't do any of the headstands and stuff that we're not supposed to do when menstrating. I figured that I could skip stretching out after the running and such since I was gonna' do the yoga later. That worked out well. :)

before dinner: I did the daily calestenics I've been trying to keep up with (but haven't done every day quite yet, just some days so far). I did all of 'em except the handstands 'cause that's inverted and since you're not supposed to do them in yoga I figure I could skip 'em a few days otherwise too, just in case. So I did 60 reps on the Leg Magic, 20 pushups (full), 5 chin-ups (assisting myself - getting closer on the first one to not needing assistance though - yay!), 20 jump lunges, 20 knee-ups, and 20 jump squats.

Detox:
I had some chives the other night, think it was Friday - and had a little gas with chive smell... yep, that's part of what happens with 'em... also makes my underarms a little smelly at times too.

Female:
didn't take my temperature today, day 2 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
We were going to take a break from the farm today 'cause it was raining & my hubby needed a break, so it was a good time since the rain would water things for us. But we couldn't stay away. LOL We ended up going to water things later in the day ('cause it had stopped raining in the late morning) and I transplanted about 50 or so tomato seedlings into larger pots. We'll be able to plant 'em out not too long from now. Gotta' get that bed ready...

It was a good thing we went out 'cause we also discovered that there was a pinhole leak in one of the radiator hoses and were able to get another hose for it while out. Sooo many things going on with our car for the last several months or so. It's not all that old either... oh well, this one's not too bad, except now that we're back home it's raining again & my poor hubby has to mess with it in the rain and dark 'cause I have to use it in the morning to go to my shift at the gym...

ANYway... yesterday I had such a surprise when I was watching the guinea pigs and rabbits all of a sudden a baby pops out of the tube they like to hang out in! No wonder it's mom has been so hungry lately. LOL We knew it might happen sometime but I've been away and didn't notice she was pregnant somehow. I've never let a companion animal have babies before - always had them spayed/neutered or only same sex or only one, etc. Was doing population control and all. I had trouble finding any guinea pigs for a few years though, and they're still hard to come by here, so I figure it's okay to let them have babies a bit... they are heard animals after all...

I love to look at them while I'm running on the treadmill when I run on the treadmill at the house. So it was extra special to do my barefoot run on the treadmill this morning while watching them AND the new baby just born yesterday! :) Soooo cute! :)

Guinea pigs and rabbits make great companions for 80-10-10 people IMO. They like to eat the same sorts of things, but often different parts (especially the guinea pigs). They are small and furry and cute. Bunnies are quiet and litter trainable, but need more room than guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are sometimes litter trainable, not quiet though. LOL Cute bizarre sounds though. Both guinea pigs and bunnies like to have cages and places to hide in their cages, so it's not like keeping a bird in a cage or anything. They feel more secure in there and are happier with a cage, as long as they have enough room to move around and get out for exploring every once in a while (with access to their cage if they get frightened while out that is).

When we are able to stay at the farm we're gonna' move the guinea pigs and rabbit there with us. We're gonna' have a big fenced in compound for them with the hutches (cages) all around the outside and then we can open up the doors to their hutches most of the day and let them come and go as they please. We'll only have about 1/4 of the compound accessible at a time though, so that we can let the grass, carrots and whatnot that I grow for them in there grow up and recover from their trompling and grazing. :)

I posted some pics of them on my "30 Bananas A Day" and "Give It To Me Raw" pages. I'll have two video's up in "Facebook" once the last one finishes uploading. It's about 3 minutes long and is taking quite some time uploading... hope it makes it before I need to go to sleep!

Here's the video with a picture at the end, so you don't have to look for 'em over there:


Here's the other picture I put up:


And here's the last one...

Has music 'cause all you could hear were the neighbors anyway on this one.
Watch out - bunny comin' through! LOL I can leap 2 guinea pigs in one bound! :)
Pesky fly! Leave 'em alone! It left after I finished the video...

K, gotta' go now - dinner's awaiting! :)

Aloha!

9/27/09 Great day at the farm yesterday! :)

I'll tell y'all about the farm in "The Rest" section later. First, gotta' do the stats for those that are tracking things. :) These stats are from yesterday, unless otherwise noted:

Sleep:
woke at 6am to get back to running before we had to leave for the day

Food:
pineapple, possibly the last of the season
bananas
jakfruit*
salad: tahini-lemon dressing with heirloom tomatoes on baby spinach, yum! :)

*I had planned to have jakfruit for dinner, and maybe a little bit of baby spinach after, but there were only a couple of pods ripe :(, so I ended up having salad later.

Exercise:
I got back to running again after a month's away I believe it's been. I didn't have much time for the runs I'd been doing before I left, but figured it'd be good to ease back into it since I was practically a beginner when I left. It went well. I wanted to run at least a mile and had run out of enough time to do so at the pace I'd been doing for the longer runs, so ran faster for the mile. It felt good. :) I probably could have done 2 miles at that pace, possibly longer... not sure about the full 5K I'd been doing before at that pace though. Eventually I'll be running the 5K and farther at that pace and faster, but not for now. Will build up to it to make sure I don't overdo...

The rest of my exercise for the day involved farmwork. Oh, I also did some calestenics and the Leg Magic a tad...

The night before I'd done 20 pushups, 5 chin-ups (assisted), 10 handstands (against a wall, only counting the kick-ups that worked), 20 lunges each leg, 20 jump lunges, 20 jump squats, and 20 knee ups... I'd do as many as I could to failure, take a rest like in weights and then do more... 'till I got all of 'em done, sometimes switching to another exercise in-between. I chose to do this many of things 'cause I found some old business card sized cards I'd made for myself and my son back when I was in charge of his P.E. when homeschooling him. They have a column for exercise goals, a column for the amounts accomplished that day (it was the wider column so you can put tally marks during the day) and a place at the top to put what day it was. It was something to help make sure we got at least that much done every day, in addition to any other exercise we did. It worked pretty well for me if I remember correctly, so I think I'll do it again, but am gonna' add a few more things and more reps too, once I'm back to my full work schedule again and have adjusted back into my workouts and all.. For now I'll do 'em at least every other day. :)

Detox:
I was having a bit of acne recently, since I've come home, not sure why. Perhaps it's from being off my exercise schedule, or perhaps it's 'cause it's warmer and more humid here (had been in places that get hotter, but everyone had air conditioning there), or perhaps it's from molds or mildew or something... was having a bit of trouble with it before I left, but it cleared when I was gone... strange. I was thinking that perhaps it's from the towel I like to use... it always smells bad to me when it's just been washed and after a bit it smells better. I've decided to give up on that towel and use another one as my favorite. I like ones that are small enough to fit on my towel bar without having to bunch up, and are not the plush thick kind - both criteria are so that the towel dries out well and doesn't get mold or mildew. I'd been looking for some like that at the stores, as I'd love to find a brown one like that, but haven't been able to find anything but the thick ones for some time now. My hubby found a blue one in our things last night, not sure where it came from, but it was washed recently and didn't smell, so yay! I've also got a backup white one, just in case. LOL I was using the hand towel in the meantime. Last night I noticed that my acne is clearing up noticably already and it still looks better this morning, so yay! Could 'a been the towel, the cardio, or... ? Guess I'll see over time.

Female:
3am temp today: 97.41 degrees fahrenheit, day 20 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
K, so onto the farm stuff! :)

It was an exciting day for my hubby and I at the farm today simply 'cause we finally started planting lots of fruit in ways that sunk in that we've finally got a long-term farming situation and are working on our dreams, right now! :)

I "potted on" papayas into 101 pots, which is the point that we count as plants. When they're seedlings we don't really count them since there's more that can go wrong with 'em at that age. There were 3-5 plants in each pot I made, most of 'em had 3. We'll be thinning them to just one at some point, probably after they're in the ground, so it's like 101 trees.

We planted out 6 large coconut trees and 12 papaya trees-worth (3 plants per trees-worth, that will eventually be one per trees-worth) into the ground, where they'll be for a long, long time. Well, the papayas won't be there all that long for trees, but they'll be there for a while... We're gonna' plant more papayas near there as well, along with other longer-term trees so that the papayas will provide a nursery effect for the other trees and as the papayas are losing their productivity the longer-term ones will be starting up theirs. :)

We also planted 13 jakfruit pods, but we don't know how well they'll do since not all the pods were ripe. They're from a tree with the best jakfruit we've had. It makes consistently smaller fruits than most jakfruit (which makes it easier for one person to finish in one meal), and the pods are very evident inside, more than other jakfruit we've had. It has a better flavor to us as well. We're not completely sure if it is just a certain kind of jakfruit or a different fruit that's related to jakfruit... but we're gonna' grow it if we can. If these seeds don't take, we'll get some more and can possibly get seedlings that have sprouted from fallen ones if there are any.

My friends who have the sprout business that we get the sprout discards from also gave us a mango seedling, a dragon-fruit transplant and a green fig seedling that we'll plant out soon. :)

Let's see, what else? I know there was more... oh yeah! The banana patch! It has grown so much in the month I was gone! Most of them have doubled their height. Wow! And the first one I planted has a keiki (new shoot) of it's own! That's a good sign that it's doing well. Yay! :)

We also put some of the barely sprouted coconuts into pots to plant out later when they're older and/or we have the places for them prepped and ready. We had figured at one point that a good minimum amount of coconuts to plant would be 10/person. We now have 7 in the ground there and 6 in pots, several more still working on sprouting, so we're gettin' there! :)

The red lilikoi, jaboticaba and other seedlings are doing well too. Yay! :)

K, gotta' go now... time to go and water all those seedlings! :) I'm gonna' drop my hubby off at the farm and then go help get someone's networking set up with their new computer and router (and other computers they already had that I'd set up before). Then I'm back to the farm. Yay! :)

I'll try to take pics and/or video so you can see things too! :)

Aloha!

8/15/09 - with videos! :)

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp., but didn't take it, up at ~7:45am
to sleep for night at 10:30pm again... good thing I can sleep in again on Sunday - gotta' get to sleep earlier Sunday though 'cause there's no sleeping in on Monday...

Food:
breakfast: 1 medium-large pineapple (no burn today, nice)
lunch: small bag lychee (~20?), 4 smallish-medium dragon fruit
before dinner/after run: 15 small-ish medium apple bananas
dinner (1 1/2 hrs after bananas): shredded cabbage & carrots with tahini-lemon/lime dressing & 1/2 avocado

Yeah, a bit too much overt fats for 10% today, but I've been doing the overt fats light to none lately so it's okay I think - will find out Sunday I suppose...

Here's a video of lunch remnants and about dragonfruit I took at the farm. It might take a bit to load 'cause it's the limit of what size Blogger will take. I'll look into other video uploading options another time:

Exercise:
Pedometer wasn't working quite right for part of the day - probably about 1/4-1/3 of the walking time I'd say... so I'm not quite sure how much regular walking I did. It says 5,548 steps, which is 2.189 miles, but I'd estimate it was more like 6,935-7,398 steps or 2.736-2.919 miles. Still, it's nowhere near as much as I walk when I work at the gym. I don't wear the pedometer when formally working out, so the other stuff is extra.

I was able to get back to my running schedule today, yay! :) My foot didn't hurt this time at all. Yay! Not exactly sure why it hurt the other day, but I'm not taking chances on getting hurt, listening to my body, and that day my foot didn't want me running. Good thing it was okay with me walking fast though. I held myself back to the scheduled increase, again, in order to take it easy. I've felt cardiovascularly like I could do 30 minutes or more straight through at the slower speed I'm running/jogging, but don't want to increase things too fast so my muscles, tendons, ligaments and such have time to adjust. But I couldn't help myself go a tad longer... I was supposed to do 25 minutes, but did 27 1/2 minutes instead. That way I can get to the 30 minute goal the next run, rather than taking two runs to get there.

I did a shorter warm-up walk too, but it felt right. Instead of the 3 miles I usually do in the process of warm-up, run & cool-down, I did a bit more: 3.36 miles instead, as I was almost to 3 miles when I was done with the run even though I'm still running slow in order to get to the 30-40 minutes solid running going solid. I walk at 3.5 - 4 mph for warm-up and cool-down, and run at 5.5 - 6.2 mph, mostly 5.5 right now. To run at an 8 minute mile pace I need to run at 7.4 mph-ish, so there's a bit to go in that department. All in due time, all in due time. ;) Oh, and I also do an extra cool-down of about 1/2 minute at 3mph, followed by ~ 1 min. @ 2mph & ~1 min. @ 1 mph, then off to ~ 1 min. easy bounch on the rebounder, just so that I don't get that trippy room rushing past me sensation when getting off the treadmill and walking. LOL I start rehydrating during the 3.5-4 mph walking cool-down and stick with it 'till after my shower or when I've taken in enough to weigh what I started. I follow the running sessions with some stretching, which lasts about 20-30 minutes. Then I'm off to the shower. Ahh... nice.

Hmm... I'm finishing this post on Sunday evening & I can't remember if I did other exercise or not... thought I'd remember for sure. Oh well. Gotta' write that stuff down.

Detox:
The sty thing's going away, so I suppose things are evening out. Still sweating buckets when running, however it's also been super humid and muggy here lately so it makes sense.

Female:
3am temp: ?? degrees Fahrenheit - didn't take it again but I know it was 96.something degrees 'cause of the time of month it is, day 4 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I'm starting to add videos in here and there as I can. Let me know what ya' think. :)

Went to a guy's place to check out some fencing that we were going to remove and take for free - on both sides. It was on Craig's list. We thought it'd be no problem with the heavy duty jack we usually use as a post puller, but our jack had been jacked (pun intended - yeah, stolen in other words) from our farm a while back. We went to the place we got it from only to discover that not only did they not have 'em anymore, but the employees there didn't remember ever having them. LOL It was a year at most that we got it. How soon they forget... guess we're not gonna' get that free fencing. Don't wanna' use the tractor for it & don't have anywhere else to get a heavy duty jack like that here either. Oh well.

I wanted to go there anyway 'cause we're running low on the timothy hay I give to the guinea pig(s & rabbit now too!) as food and they use it for bedding too. Yes, we live with 4 guinea pigs and a bunny now. :) They're all so cute! The feed store apparently stopped carrying timothy hay recently as well, saying they didn't have enough sales to keep carrying it. Darn. Part of living on a small island and all I suppose. I don't know of anywhere else on island to get bales of timothy hay & the guinea pigs shouldn't have alfalfa. Guess that's another thing we'll hafta' grow ourselves - sooner than later it seems. I wanted to grow it eventually, but looks like we may have to push that up a bit. They eat all fresh food otherwise, but it seems they need a bit of dry stuff too, thus the timothy. I think we'll change the approach to the hutches and not use it for bedding so much anymore. We'll make hay dispenser dealies to go on the wall and let them use the fresh stuff for bedding if they want. We plan to move 'em out to the farm sometime in the nearish future too anyway and when we do we're going to have a compound for them to go out and eat the stuff growing directly.

We're thinking of setting up a worm composting system below their hutches so that the droppings and such go directly in there, and not having things in there for bedding. The bunny will have a shelf to hang out on to get away from the guinea pigs and mesh flooring if she wants and the guinea pigs have tubes they can go in for those purposes as well (but would be getting away from the bunny if they want instead of the guinea pigs). We can have the hay feeder on the side of the hutches and put their veggies and fruit in trays that clip there too. The compound would be fenced in and have 4 sections. There'd be a sort of entry hall of sorts at the base of their hutches where there'd be 4 doors, one to each section of the compound. We'd let them out into one section at a time, letting the other 3 grow back from all the grazing. I could plant carrots and other root crops in there too for the bunny to dig up and eat. She loves to dig. :) There'd be enough space for them to go in and run and munch around and visit with us if they like. I could go in there and knit, crochet and/or spin cotton while they explore and eat. :)

We'd open up the hutches and the door to the current section of the compound and let them decide when or if to come out. We'd shepherd them back in before the day's over. We were thinking that the compound wouldn't need a roof 'cause they'd only be out in the daytime when we're there too, but I might end up having a shade cloth or some other sort of moveable roof in order to let them hang out there when I'm not in there too (but still in the area). I'm fairly certain a bird wouldn't swoop down to get them when I'm sitting there with them, but it might if I leave the compound to do other farmwork... I planned to have some things for them to play in and on in the compound too, so they'll also have them to hide in if necessary. I'll be able to clean out the cages without having to grab 'em and take 'em out of there this way too. Less cleaning needed if we do it all this way too, so it'll be nicer for all of us. There are so many things to do for the farm though, I'm not sure when we'll get all of this done.

While we were at the feed store we got a hay fork, so nice to have an actual hay fork that works. Yay! We've been using our digging fork like one 'cause all we could find elsewhere were forks with way too many tines for hay. Nothing like having the right tool for the right job. Moving hay is sooo much easier now. Ahh... a pleasure actually.

We also found some clips they use for horse stuff which look like solid brass and are the right size for the homemade custom exercise resistance bands we want to make. So we got 'em. Now we have everything we need we think, except for the guava wood. We'll go hiking to an overgrown guava forest and get some sometime soon, possibly Wednesday. We would have gone this weekend, but my hubby's trying to finish a grant proposal so we'll do it another time. I think I'm really, really gonna' like these resistance bands when we finish 'em. So nifty and pretty too! :)

We're still setting up things at the farm in order to plant things. We've planted some bananas already and a mammey sapote in the rich soil in the rotted out center of an albezia tree stump, but that's all that's in the ground right now. Well, we do have some pineapples in the mud by the stream, but that's not their final place, it's just like a nursery for them 'till we can plant them along the fence. Here's a short video of our pineapple nursery area. My hubby made a nifty stepping stone path down to the stream with rocks that came out of the gardening area:

And here's the mammey sapote and bananas we have planted so far:

There were really tall albezia trees along the stream that the owners had cut down after they got the land. They're beautiful trees, but they're also quite dangerous since they grow so fast and are sort of leggy in that way, tending to break off in the wind and/or just fall down at times. One fell over on a neighbor's property when we were there a while back. It sounded like a bunch of firecrackers going off. Huge tree trunk and tree, just broke off in the middle and fell down - just beyond the property beyond the tilled area you see in the video. Didn't look dead or rotting on the outside and it wasn't even windy that day. We used the leaves in the compost and are using the logs for various things here and there - like how my hubby made the edges and steps down to the banana patch you can see in the video. The stumps will sprout back, but that's good 'cause we can coppice them and use the nitrogen rich leaves as mulch and/or compost Permaculture-style. :)

We've been planting some seeds from fruit we eat in flats and pots in the meantime too. We're expecting the rock dust and shell and other organic amendments we ordered to arrive sometime in the next week or two, so we'll work them into the soil and then will be ready to start planting. Yay! We did soil testing and analysis in order to find out the condition of the soil, what it needs to get back to what it should be from where it's been. That's why we're waiting for the amendments, so we can make sure the soil has everything it should in order to give the plants every chance to have everything they should, so that we have every chance to get everything we need from them. :) We'll probably maintain the fertility primarily with compost after this initial amending, lots and lots of compost. :)

We've been getting sprout discards from some friends of mine who run a commercial sprouting operation not far from our farm. It makes terrific compost along with the grass clippings from the land - and our own compost from eating of course. We'll probably get compost from other people as well once we start doing markets again. Compost is definitely the health food for soil and we plan to give it plenty. :) We get the sprouts in trash cans and sometimes they make castles like sand castles at the beach when we dump 'em. Nifty! :) Here's what I mean:

It's so nice to be planting fruit seeds, knowing that we'll be able to grow and take care of them through their fruiting years. :) I'm also gonna' be able to finally plant cotton there too, once we get things going on the edibles. I've got seeds not only from locally grown organic white cotton, but also heirloom cotton varieties from the Mainland that yeild naturally colored cotton: brown, rust & green are the colors I have right now. So I'm soooo looking forward to planting, harvesting, and spinning them in order to make clothes and things truly from scratch, naturally and organically. :)

We've been quite entertained by our pool-pond which is an above ground pool that we're using for ag water storage. It's got fish and plants and is basically a pond in a pool. The water gravity feeds into it from the stream, we have a filter on the intake so we don't suck up any fish from the stream. We have another filter on the intake for the pump so we don't suck up any fish from the pool-pond to water the farm as well. There are two filters in-between there to filter water before it goes through the pump as well. We don't have to use the pump for lots of things down lower as they work gravity fed. We'll be using the pump to run the sprinklers for the veggies and such at certain times of the day though. We gathered fish, clams, prawn and plants from the stream, nearby pond and local rivers to put in our pool-pond to help keep it healthy.

We also got some fish and plants from the pet store and put 'em in there for biodiversity. We weren't sure at first if we were doing the pet store fish a disservice by putting them in a pond after they've probably lived their lives (possibly generations of them have lived their lives) in sheltered aquariums. We weren't sure if they'd be able to adjust to a more natural and wild-ish sort of life. Now we're sure we made the right choice as they've all taken to it very well. We don't see them all of the time as the pool-pond is deeper than we can see and there are all the plants and things in there as well, but when we do see them they look very happy, natural and well-fed. It's fun to watch all the fish we can see and other things in the pond at the end of the day with my hubby. :)

Dragonflies like the pool pond too. I've been trying to film them for a while now. Finally I caught one just sitting on the end of a water hyacinth stem, a pretty red one. I took a few videos of it, but don't have time to upload them now, maybe I'll upload it another time. It's getting late. Here's a picture of it for now. It's wings are down:

There's so many other things to tell y'all about to catch up, but I don't have time right now to tell you it all, so we'll have to catch up more later.

Aloha for now! :)

12/27/08

K, guess I didn't make it online last weekend. My hubby's computer went down and he's been using mine a lot. With two of us using the same one when we used to just use our own I got off-schedule. We usually do the computer things at the same time as each other. He's taking the cord apart and fixing it and such as I type. (We can't just go to the store and get another here, have to find one online and it takes forever and lots 'o bucks to get one here).

Sleep
We haven't been able to farm, still, due to all the rains here and how our new farm has been flooded for the last few weeks. So we've been working on things around the house and it's been great, however we've also gotten off-schedule with our sleeping. I think it's affecting our quality of sleep too. We're both starting to realize it and will be trying to ease back into something more regular again.

Female
I'm on day 8 of my cycle, there's a little boy icon on there. I haven't been willing to take my temperature for a while though since the sleep is so irregular and I've been either going to sleep or getting up too near the times I can take my temperature lately. I have been putting in when my period starts, so I suppose that's where it's getting the info from. I'm thinking of changing the time I take my temperature to a different time since our schedule's all different now. That might help.

I felt a bit of PMS before this last period: sore breasts, a little headache and some constipation/bloating. I felt a little hormone emotional for a few hours as well. I haven't felt that stuff in years. It all was really slight and minor, but I noticed them 'cause I don't usually have those symptoms anymore. A sign that I need to get things more in order towards the ideal again. I think the main thing that will help my health more noticeably than the other things is getting regular aerobic exercise, so I'm gonna' work getting that back into my life again (along with the other things).

Farm
We've run out of things at the old farm and can't plant more there so we're not doing farmer's markets anymore. Well, actually there are a few older things we've been harvesting for ourselves as we make trips back and forth for moving everything. It's not the quality we'd sell, but it works for personal use, for now at least. We're about out of that too... I'm thinking of planting some things at our house to bridge the gap, perhaps in pots so that they don't get flooded as well.

Food
So that means I've started to buy things for my evening meals again. At first I figured I might as well get stuff I'd buy occasionally if I had to buy stuff. It's hard to buy things we usually grow - get so spoiled when you're a farmer and all... The problem with getting the things I was getting is that it's not ideal fare, not too bad in terms of that sort of thing, but not the best either. I was had some dried tomatoes that were in olive oil (and the olive oil) on some non-organic cucumber noodles a few times. I also had some Essene bread, which is considered raw (like dehydrated) but is still grains and such. Both delicious, but not ideal, oh well. Actually, the Essene bread wasn't so delicious, so I'll probably skip that kind at least in the future. I do okay with the olive oil occasionally on our fresh grown organic cukes, but I this was a bit more than occasionally since I had it 3 or 4 nights in a row...

What else am I eating these days? I'm having coconut water or OJ for breakfast and bananas for lunch. I'm eating either apple bananas, ladyfinger bananas, "cooking" bananas (raw & ripe of course), or Cavendish bananas these days. The Cavendish aren't locally grown but the rest are. I sometimes end up having to get them at the store when there aren't enough ripe local bananas. The storms have affected the banana supply here as well as slowing the ripening speed of what I find. I'm drinking more water lately - probably 'cause of the non-ideal dinner foods. I think it's mainly the incidental salt I'm getting from them that's making me more thirsty. Did I say that I wrapped some of the older stuff from the farm in dried Nori sheets a few times too? Yeah, not too great either. Not the worst, of course, but I've done better for myself and will again! :)

I keep thinking that I should just skip the dinner stuff for now and just have fruit instead, but I haven't been into having bananas or oranges for dinner right now, and haven't been getting the more expensive fruits 'cause we're budgeting everything 'till we're farming again. So I'm more on a survival raw diet than a thrival one. It's going well considering the situation and all.

Stress
Speaking of going well considering the situation and all... I haven't been stressed out much at all about the lack of income thing or the farm being flooded and more storms coming thing either. We might end up doing other work in the meantime until the land dries up enough to plant or we find another place to farm, but I feel fine. Nice. It feels like it's all gonna' work out well, so I'm "going with it." :)

Exercise
I'm also not getting as much exercise as usual since we're not farming. We're doing things around the house, moving things from the old farm to the new one and within the house, but it doesn't feel as good physically. Perhaps it's 'cause we're not outside all day anymore or something...

Overall
Anyway, I am still doing raw vegan and getting exercise and sleep, but it's "off" a bit compared to how it usually is, so I'm not as vital as I know I can be. I really want to get these things done around the house though, so I'm willing to deal with it. I'll just have to adjust to the changes and get into the swing of getting regular quality sleep, exercise and more ideal food again the way things are right now. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Happy Holidays!

Aloha!

12/14/08

K, so I'm on-track-ish for the Blogging so far... Yay! :)

Farm
It looks like we might have done our last farmers' market for a while, although we might have a bit for Wednesday. We're gonna' try...

We harvested for yesterday's market hoping it'd clear up enough, but it didn't. The bridge was closed so we couldn't do the first one. The storm let up enough to go to the second one, but not many people were going out at that point anyway. There had been a lot of thunder and lightning in addition to the wind and rain and we don't usually get lightning, and even rarer is thunder with it. It started raining again and getting windy, etc. after a bit, so we left with lots of leftovers. Unfortunately we weren't able to preserve them, so they'll be future fertilizer via compost...

Food
Too bad about the salad 'cause I could use some salad right now. Oh well. I'll hafta' make do with something else. Kinda' a bummer to be combined with a shortage of ripe bananas too. My banana guy was away the week before last and it threw off the supply (in addition to the varied whether for ripening) more than I realized.

I got some carrots, broccoli and corn at the farmer's market yesterday - all of which are sort of rare for me. I was feeling like getting other veggies in me as well as the greens. I ate the corn right away - 'cause it's best eaten as soon as possible after it's been picked. I ate the carrots a little while ago and had some of the broccoli leaves as wrappers for wraps with my salad last night. The broccoli was mainly leaves. Maybe I'll dip the rest of the broccoli into some lemon-tahini dip or something tonight after lots and lots of orange juice (since I don't have salad).

I had OJ for breakfast too and a small hand of apple bananas at lunch. Now that I think about it, there's probably no way I'll not overeat the fats today. Oh well. I think I'll have several hands of bananas ready for tomorrow or the next day, so I'll be able to even it out then.

I gathered a bunch of lilikoi (passion fruit), the yellow tangy kind from our yard today & I'll probably have some of them tonight too, just after the OJ and before the dip. Hmmm... it's turning out to be a better dinner than I thought it'd be. :)

Exercise
Not much official exercise... we've been doing loads of stuff at our house with the house and yard so have been getting some that way. We've cleared out room to use my son's home gym thing which is exciting so I'll probably start using that again soon. We've been moving some stuff around that hasn't been accessible for a while and the dust was getting to me so I've been not as energetic due to the sneezing increase that happens with exercise when that's happening. Too bad I wasn't full-on with the elements of health better these days - I probably wouldn't have been as bothered by the dust and all. I know it's worked that way for me in the past with 80-10-10 (where if I'm "on it" with things I don't have much if any allergy issues). Oh well. It is what it is. At least I know why.

Sleep
Sleep? Er, uh.... yeah. Well... We have been getting loads and loads of stuff done that we've meant to for years - but it has also often been late at night so I haven't been getting as good of sleep as I should. I started to catch up a bit today - took a nap, but still need to do a bit more, perhaps tomorrow. We'll see.

Female
I should be well into the green days, but I have been getting to sleep so close to my regular time for taking my temperature and getting up too close to it afterward that I haven't been able to take my temperature lately. I probably could have and it might have been okay, but I like to skip it if I'm in doubt about if the reading would be accurate or not, just in case...

While we wanted more children years ago, our son is 20 now and we're kinda' liking the independence and such. It's still a possibility for the future to have another child, but I'm not wanting to take the chance right now.

Crafts
I think I'm gonna' join Ravelry and blog over there about some of the fiber crafts I do. I have to request an invitation, then I can join. If/when that happens I'll let y'all know so if any of you are interested in more info on that stuff you can go there. I figure I shouldn't take up too much space here on it. I might change my mind and just combine it all into this one blog, still deciding. If you have suggestions, let me know. :)

In the meantime I'll cover some things here... I love knitting and stuff like that 'cause it gives me something to do with my hands instead of figiting when I can't do anything else. I also like being able to make custom things so they're just how I want them. And it's also exciting, sort of addictive to me too... There are little bits of progress to measure and goals to reach along the way and it's so exciting to me to anticipate and reach them. Here's and example of what I mean: I finally decided to go ahead and go for knitting a sock.

I was always intimidated by having to use double-pointed needles - and not just two, but FIVE! I had been afraid I'd end up with messes of dropped stitches by the time I got back around again. LOL So I decided to face my fear and just do it. I'm sooo glad I did too! :) I knitted a nice lacy pair of cotton socks for myself and I was so amazed that I was actually doing it the whole time. It was like, "Wow, these bamboo knitting needles are working just fine, not losing stiches after all." Then, "Hey, look! The toe actually looks like a sock toe, and my toes fit in it!" (I was knitting them toe-up).

Next I was using Five needles instead of two and it was, "How cool this looks and it's not that hard after all." Then I got to the pattern and it was, "That is a nice pattern I do like it. I'm almost to the heel!" Kinda' nifty how that design had the same procedure for the heel as the toe, which really appeals to me from a practical perspective or something like that. So I thought that was way-cool too. When I was done with the heel it was, "Gosh, this really is starting to look like a real sock!" I was showing each of these steps and sharing my excitement with my family and at that point my hubby was excited/impressed too. He said something like, "It looks like a sock now already. I mean you could just end it now and it'd be a sock." (He likes to wear footy types of short socks with his running shoes and all).

I agreed that I could, but was gonna' finish the pattern and make more of a leg on it. I'm glad I did. They came out so much cuter than I thought they would. They're almost like little boots or something. The same look/feel to me as the little boots I used to love to wear in college and when I met my hubby. Sweet! :) I'll hafta' take a picture of 'em and show y'all. I'll try to take pics of the other two projects I've done recently as well - and maybe some older ones too while I'm at it... Maybe I'll have that done for next week's posting.

I was gonna' get back to spinning again today and was all ready to sit down and spin when I realized that my container of unspun de-seeded cotton had been moved during all the stuff we're doing at the house and I have no idea where it is right now. Oh well. Probably a good thing anyway. I might not have gotten to doing this blog on time otherwise.

A lot of the things we're doing around the house and farm are sort of like craft projects on a larger scale. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but that's what building stuff is really. Not sure why it didn't occur to me before...

Other
Well, I should go now. My hubby's back from the new farm, it's dark and that means it's time to work on the garage some more... It feels so great to finally get these things done! :)

Aloha!

12/10/08 - Updates

About Blogging
K, so you wonder, what happened? Janie was on a roll again...

Yeah, well, um... lots of stuff, actually. Sorry. I haven't been online much most of the time so it's been harder to do the blogging because of that. I'm thinking of doing audio or video blogging instead or in addition, alternating or something. Podcasts of sorts and all. My camera takes short videos fairly well and I might be able to find my son's digital audio recorder - both portable. I could do the blogs in-between stuff informally on the go... Hmmm... I think it has potential.

I think I'll be able to do some of the FAQs with audio or video stuff too. That might get them to happen quicker than they've been happening.

I have been pretty obsessed with knitting lately - been knitting pretty much every bit of spare time I have with my hands. I have also gotten into listening to Podcasts about crafts in addition to news and such as well. I just realized today that my son hasn't been using the digital audio recorder we got him to use for taking notes or making compositions in school. It's one that would interface with voice recognition software and type things out for him, which is a challenge due to his dyslexia. He's gotten fairly proficient with typing and spell check though and doesn't need it for his life right now. So.... I'm hoping he knows where it is still (Mr. Gagethead, he is indeedy) and it's not buried in some pile of electronic stuff somewhere not to be found for years. LOL

I've also decided that rather than try to post daily and feel badly about getting so far behind, I'll try to post weekly instead - either typed, audio or video. We'll see how that works. I'm not sure what day I'll post them, probably over the weekend, but I'll figure it out once our schedules settle again.

The Farm
We were doing quite well with the farm for a while there, had worked up to 7 farmers' markets a week (over 6 days - there were 2 on one of the days), and had other wholesale customers as well. We were lovingly pumping out the organic veggies and loving it. :)

We knew that we'd probably have to move the veggies to another place once the papayas get to a certain age as they'd shade out the veggies and would get so large that the roots would overlap so we wouldn't want to disturb them. So we were able to get a lease on some other land that we planned to move onto when the time came. We planned to overlap things and transition from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

Well, there were complications with that plan - mainly getting the land at the new farm prepared for planting. We had a hard time finding someone who had the equipment and know-how to do what we needed here - and then had a hard time finding time they were available. It took several months to get them out there to begin with, but it worked quite well. Well, sort of... He wouldn't do both parts we wanted to do, claiming that we needed to mow, then wait and mow again before doing the rest. That's how most of them do it here. So try as we did, we could not get him to stay and finish the second part that day. He said he'd be back in a week or two though, so we figured we could wait. Well, wait we did... and we're still waiting! It not only has been over a week or two - it's been over a month or two at this point. Ug!

The problem is, we cannot wait any longer. The time to move is now - for many reasons: we were subleasing through someone else and the landlord changed the locks on the gates but would not issue more than one key for our group (even though there were several subleasing the piece). This is after the security guards had been hassling people who came there to help us farm. It got worse after the key change - they said that only my husband could go there (not even me) and that we had to have the key (which they would not give enough copies of for my hubby to have his own) and that we could not use a hide-a-key and all. It'd become totally unworkable. Evenso, my hubby plodded along and worked out something so that he can bring me in and we have access to the shared key.

The security people got all weird over time and the landlord's office claimed that they were having problems out there (there are many acres of leased land over there beyond the gates and many people leasing various parts of it). We weren't able to get in for a few days when they changed the locks because the security people told us we couldn't go in without the key - but they hadn't issued the new key yet. Doi. We ended up having to miss a few markets and weren't able to go in daily to water, weed, plant and tend to the farm either. In addition to that, there had been a few storms and such that made it more challenging to grow things consistently and some farmer's markets that were completely rained out. It had become questionable about whether the people we were subleasing from actually had a lease for the term we were supposed to have as well as other issues with them that had become apparent. We had been having less and less planting space due to the papayas as well, so we realized the time to relocate had come, ready or not. We've reduced down to two days of farmer's markets a week, have stopped planting and stopped weeding at the old farm in order to get this done.

So we have been working on relocating our farm, even though we are still waiting for the equipment to come and prepare it for us to plant... because we have no other choice at this point. My hubby and I have been trying to figure out ways to get some things planted ASAP without waiting for the equipment as we cannot even raise the guy on the phone these days anymore. (He may be off-island for the holidays and such). Heh, the ironic thing about the security and all over at our old farm is that after we reduced the farmer's markets and stopped going there daily, someone stole some of our tools. We'd never had any theft problems before - and they were supposed to be making things more secure by making it so hard for people who belong there to get in. LOL We weren't able to do anything about it the day we discovered the thefts 'cause we were rushed to get the harvest done and to market, but we moved out everything we could over the next couple of days, leaving things to do harvest with since we'd still need it there for now. We got a storage shed and assembled it and all, after my hubby cleared some of the land with his high wheel weed wacker and regular heavy duty weed wacker.

We need to set up the irrigation and all over at the new place too - but need the land prepped first... We're trying to figure out how to get it done anyway. It'll work out in some manner or another though.

It's nice to not have that long commute daily anymore and I'm looking forward to the short commute in the near future. So it'll be much better once it's done. We'll just end up having a gap in our production it seems, which we'll deal with in some manner or another as well.

Oh yeah, we've also been looking for acreage and at acreage within the price range of the person who's gonna' get land that we'll then be able to use long-term. We've been looking at auctions, listings and word of mouth stuff too. We haven't found anything that will work in that price range yet, but we feel we're getting close! :)

House
Given that we couldn't farm and haven't been able to do things as much in relation to that lately we've been taking the opportunity to get things done around the house that were overdue and needed. It feels so nice to get some of this done - finally. We've been able to get rid of some of the clutter inside much better than ever before and we've started to do some repairs here and there (like the wooden fence that we put up about 10 years ago that needs new supports 'cause we didn't want to use treated lumber at the time and it's rotten now). We've also decided to take out the garden fencing in our yard, figuring that we'll do the trellis gardening at the farm instead. That will give us more room to get to the fruit trees and harvest them when they're producing. We're going to move the plants in the garden area to the new farm. Most of them are Permaculture-ish type of plants that grow on their own here once established, so we can plant them there even before the land is prepped. We decided to not have a compost pile at the house since the new farm is in town and we can bring things there instead, so we're clearing out the compost piles from the yard. Nice.

It feels terrific to make some tangible progress in this area. There's much more we want to accomplish (including new flooring at some point - hopefully soon), so we may not finish it before we get things going at the farm but we're getting loads of it done now. Speaking of the flooring... it's currently what was a white plush carpet (came with the house, unfortunately) that has majorly suffered from little boys trekking in and out of the yard from the pool to my son's room and all, not to mention us coming from the garden in the yard or the farm. We all tried to take off our shoes at the door, but sometimes when in a hurry that fell by the wayside... And then there were the occasional spills and such, and rain coming in from the window when we didn't realize it, stuff leaking under boxes stored there, etc. It's amazing that it doesn't smell. Thank GOODness! :) It's not white anymore, needless to say, heh. And it's needed replacing due to all the stains and such for a while. Now that we've cleared out a lot of the boxes and such that were stored in there it's more of a possibility. Yay! :)

We want to have something that will be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. LOL I suppose almost anything would be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. :) We'd been eyeing bamboo flooring that's surprisingly inexpensive for some time now, but as it got closer I started thinking that tile was better. We'd been eyeing tiles too, but were leaning towards the bamboo previously. I went on the Internet to find out pros and cons of things and discovered that we might want to do a cement stain instead, and then seal it. The foundation is a cement slab and the garage has it bare with just a seal, which works quite well. It looks like the cement stains are quite versatile and can be quite beautiful as well. So that's what I'm leaning towards right now. My hubby's not so sure. Actually he's not so sure about thinking about changing the flooring right now either. We have so much else to deal with right now, it's understandable. Whatever we choose we'd have to take the current carpet out, so I figure that we'll see if cement staining is even an option at that point. (The cement slab has to be in good condition to do it apparently).

So ANYway... lots of stuff going on at the house-front as well, suffice it to say. I'll move on to other stuff now...

Food
I'm still doing all raw, like usual, however not as well as usual for the time being at least. We're budgeting our funds and have not had as many veggies for ourselves to eat or to trade for other things, so things have been a bit scarce at times. This has resulted in me eating a bit too much fat (probably more like 20%-25% ish) and some of my rarely occasionally things more frequently. It's temporary though, so I'm feeling okay about it. Of course I'm noticing the corresponding changes in my vitality but at least I know what's causing it and how to change it to what I want.

Exercise
That's been going really well at times and not so good at other times while I was away. I finally was able to make it to one of the classes at the gym where I work. It was really fun! :) I was going to the gym and rowing every other day and doing some free weights again too for a while there. Then it became obvious that I wasn't able to keep doing the work schedule I'd been doing - and get enough sleep. I was getting too tired and was taking the time to sleep instead of working out 'cause I just wasn't getting enough sleep otherwise. Between getting up at 3 in the morning for the job at the gym and doing harvests and farmer's markets for the rest of the day, sometimes into the night, I was only getting about 3-5 hours of sleep most days. I was having trouble staying awake when driving to the farmer's market that was the farthest from the farm (about an hour and a half) so my hubby had to do that one. Just so I could sleep. He needed to be farming though. It didn't make sense to hire temporary help at the farm to cover my hours either 'cause we pay people more than I was getting paid at the gym. LOL So I told them I couldn't work that day anymore. They said that the other person who was working mornings was going to be switching jobs there and they wanted me to just switch that day for another instead of working one less day. I figured out what day was the least worst day and exchanged it for that one. The thing is, it conflicted with the class I took there. Bummer. I thought that I might be able to take the yoga class that conflicted with my previous shift though, but now I'm realizing that it's probably not gonna' happen. Now that we're moving our farm, we won't be down that way as much so I'll probably not make it.

I'm thinking that I may have to quit that job completely, or at least drop the day I switched for. That day's not gonna' work out very well once we're back to our usual schedule since that night's the night we stay very late harvesting (with headlamps) for the early morning market the "next" day. I will probably not go there much 'cause it's an hour away, and it doesn't make sense to drive that far for the amount of pay I get and a membership I'll probably not be using much if at all... But I'm not gonna' drop things just yet. I will wait and see what happens. I may be able to work out after my shifts and after markets we have in that area if I'm getting enough sleep otherwise. Since we wouldn't have to commute for two hours a day just to get to the farm it's possible that I would get enough sleep anyway... We'll see...

In the meantime I'm doing other exercise here and there. We cleared out enough room in the living room to be able to use some of the exercise things I had in there and have enough floor room to do things in. Yay! My hubby pulled out the two rebounders we have when it was raining and we rebounded together. It was so fun! I just love rebounding! It's so joyful! :) It's also kinda' funny to try to coordinate our bouncing together too. :)

Sleep
Well, I sort of covered that in other areas here - it's been variable, but I was falling quite behind for a while too. I discovered that I needed to temper my knitting obsession too 'cause I was staying up too late doing that as well as the other challenges. So I'm still challenged in that area and working on it... Yeah, tonight it's the blogging, heh. Oh well...

Female
I haven't been taking my temperature as regularly lately 'cause of the irregular sleep, but the BabyComp still works anyway. So cool. I'm soooo glad I got it. I can just take may temperature around ovulation and menstration and that does it.

Other Stuff
My relationship with my hubby's going fabulously well, as is my relationship with my son. I am so grateful for my life with them, every moment.

When we cleared out the living room that also made room for my spinning wheel again. Yay! I haven't gotten back to it yet, mainly 'cause I've been distracted with my knitting obsession, but I'm planning on starting back on it next week.

I was playing the banjo ukulele every day - in my spare time, on the way to/from the farm and all, but then the battery in the tuner I used to keep it tuned ran out... And I took too long to get it replaced. It's been a while now and I've gotten out of practice. I have the batteries now, but haven't started back yet. I'll be starting off close to the beginning. That's okay. It's for fun anyway. The knitting has sort of taken it's place to/from the farm so I'll have to alternate them once I get going again.

The vog has come by once or twice since I last posted I believe. The last one was a few days ago and was getting to me. It lasted a bit longer than the vog though and I realized that it was a bit different afterwards - it turned out that I had another one of those little eyelashes growing astray - and into my eye. It was a bit hard to figure it out 'cause my eyes are often sensitive to wind after the vog exposure even after it's gone and it often feels like something's in it or irritating it. Was nice to have an instant solution to that irritation though - just pluck the eyelash and it's over. Definitely nice.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I only have one guinea pig now. The other one died. She was quite old, for a guinea pig that is, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It looked like she was peaceful and she'd been eating and drinking and acting fine so I think she was happy too. Same thing happened with my dog too - she died peacefully and was old as well. We miss them both daily, and we're grateful to have been able to share our lives with them for as long as we did. :) So now we're sharing our house and lives with only one guinea pig and a cat... along with all the unofficial companions like geckos and other lizards, birds and everything outside and all...

Let's see, what else... hmm... don't know right now. Guess it'll come out eventually as I blog more.

K, gonna' go now. Need to relax and go to sleep... getting up early tomorrow again and stayed up too late last night finishing a shirt I was knitting... (insert embarrassed smiley here).

10-12-08

Sleep:
up at 7am-ish

Food:
orange juice for breakfast, yellow dragon fruit a bit afterward
the rest is TBD..

We're going to a potluck today that is encouraging people to bring home-grown produce so hopefully that'll mean lotsa' fruit! :) We're actually not gonna' be bringing fruit though 'cause none of our fruit trees are bearing at the moment, well except the lemon tree. We're bringing three salads ('cause there are three of us): one that's two of our farm's 5-lettuce blend bags' worth and perhaps some rose petals; one that's two of our farm's salad mix bags' worth with some edible herb flowers; one that's cubed chayote squash, lemon, katuk leaves & flowers, tomatoes and perhaps some rose petals - all from our yard, except the tomatoes are from our farm. I'll make two dressings for people to pour on separately: avocado-lemon and avocado-lemon-basil-chives. I'll blend the avocado and lemon to dressing consistency, perhaps adding water if needed, pour out some of it into one container and then make the other dressing by adding the chopped herbs into the blender and barely blending it just for mixing. I'll try to take some pics of them for y'all. Since the thing starts at 10am and lunch is at noon, I figure that's when the potluck'll be so we're gonna' take things in a cooler and assemble them into the bowls when it's time.


update:
So I didn't end up having the OJ for breakfast after all. I discovered that we only had 2 oranges left LOL, so I had bananas instead. I ate 'em while making the dressing and chayote thing for the potluck. My hubby was gonna' get a pot for me to plant seeds from the yellow dragon fruit into so I didn't have them yet this morning either.

I ended up putting the juice of the 2 oranges into the dressings for the potluck too, in order to have more liquid 'cause the avocado made it thicker than I had lemons for and didn't want to add too much water... It tasted nice so it worked out fine. We were all running late for the workshop so I forgot to take the pictures I intended of the food. Oops - outta' practice again... had my camera and everything too.

The salads and dressings went over really well at the potluck. There were pasta dishes, chips, crackers, other salads and such too. Good thing my hubby over harvested. LOL We refilled the large salad bowls several times and it was all eaten, even though the crackers and some other things weren't. I was surprised how quickly the chayote and katuk dish went with that diverse crowd. Nice. There were some bananas there, but they were pretty bruised up so I had our salads all mixed together with the dressing. Then a friend of mine told me that they'd brought some longan from their yard. I hadn't seen it before so went and got some. Not the best to eat it after the salad dressing (overt fat from the avocado), but it was a potluck and I knew I might be mis-combining...

A farmer friend of mine gave me a chip she'd made from dehydrating greens and I can't remember what else - perhaps only Bragg's, not sure. It was tasty. I'm now wondering what else was in there 'cause if it was only greens and Bragg's I could do some without the Bragg's at some point for my hubby and it'd be a better choice for chips I think... I'll hafta' ask her sometime.

I had more bananas for dinner. I've got a lot of them ripening now so I'll be eating them a lot for a while...

Exercise:
Not a lot of official exercise today. It's the only day we don't harvest for the farmer's markets, but I am harvesting from our yard for a potluck today and my hubby's harvesting a tiny amount from the farm for it as well. I'll probably do some weights and/or dance video game with my son later.

Detox:
A bit dehydrated lately, not sure why. Drinking more water, but haven't had anything noticeable detox-wise to report - yet.

Female:
I skipped the temperature today 'cause my sleep was irregular (my hubby likes to sleep on an air mattress & it sprung a slow leak that partially deflated it during the night) and I thought it wouldn't be accurate, day 8 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I planned to catch up on my posts - or at least with the pics I took a while back today, but I'm not sure if that's gonna' happen after all. My hubby found out about a workshop/class that we all (my hubby, son and I) want to take today. It takes up most of the day, so I may not have time after all. Sorry. If I don't do it today, it'll probably wait 'till next weekend 'cause I'm still filling in for the guy who filled in for me at the gym and it makes me a bit short on sleep and time... Yesterday I decided to take a nap after the farmers markets, thought it'd be an hour or two.. I ended up sleeping three hours and could have still slept more if my hubby hadn't come home then. I wanted to get up and spend some time with him for a while before going back to sleep for the night. He was sleepy too so we went to sleep early. This morning I feel fairly well-rested (considering the deflated bed situation overnight LOL). Guess we'll hafta' patch the airbed or something. I was definitely wanting my hammock after a while, but stuck around 'cause I wanted to be with my hubby more...

The class we're going to is nifty - supposed to help you build your own wind and/or solar power system. We've all read books on this sort of thing and set up little solar power systems in the past, so hopefully it will cover things in more detail than just an overview or what's-possible-and-hire-someone sort of deal. It'd be cool if they got so detailed as to tell you how to make solar cells and such, but I kinda' think not, think it's a buy this and buy that sort of thing...

K, well that's it for now. I'll be back here posting for y'all when I can! :)

update: the workshop was pretty good, not just this is what's possible, went into more specifics and it helped update us with some of the newer batteries, controllers and such since we were off the grid the last time. Nice. K, gotta' go to sleep!!!

I'll try to take pics of my food better again...

Aloha! :)

9/28/08

I'm posting this two weeks later, so I don't remember much at this point. I'm gonna' override the posting date so it shows up as if I posted it on the 28th though.

It was my first day back, so I was short on food still and still jet lagged...

Food:
Breakfast was stuff I found around the house...
~10:15am: Star fruit - the first pic's what I started with and the 2nd is what was left when I was 'done' with the star fruit...


~10:30am: Then I decided to have some of the corn in the fridge 'cause even though I was done with star fruit, it wasn't enough calories. I find it hard to eat enough star fruit at times due to the waxiness of it. I realized that the corn wasn't fresh and I wouldn't usually eat it beyond the first day from harvest, but I was foraging so-to-speak, so I ate one to see how it sat with me. It did fine, so I ate another. The pic's of the second one and one like the first...


~12:15pm: My son told me that there were some longan around for me (gift from other farmers at market) so I searched around some more and found them. There weren't many so I ate 'em on the way into the farm...


~1:15pm: I got to the farm and looked around at what was still growing in the personal section I took care of before I left. The cucumbers were pretty much all done by then, there were still some tomatoes and basil, the peas were long gone and there were a few long beans still though. So I ate what long beans I could find. Here's a pic of 'em growing, followed by a pic of me with some of 'em. :) I was wearing the lei my hubby gave me at the airport when he picked me up 'cause it was still good...



~3pm: It was time for more serious calories, the foraging wasn't doing it for me anymore. So we went to the grocery store that usually has ripe bananas, but they didn't have any ripe right then. :( So I decided to get dates and eat 'em with apples to clean my teeth and lessen the sweetness. Yep. Home in the tropics and stuck eating imported stuff still. LOL I'll be able to go to the farmer's market soon and get things going again. No worries. :) My hubby got stuff from their deli and we ate at the mall. Here's my stuff in the re-usable bag that stuffs into a smaller attached one for storage:


When we got home (at about 6pm) we discovered that the rack of bananas in our yard that my hubby was so excited about ('cause it was sooo large and his favorite kind) had ripened while I was gone and some of them were already eaten by the birds. He was so busy doing everything, leaving in the dark and arriving back in the dark that he hadn't noticed... He harvested it and we harvested some coconuts for me to have in the morning too. I got lemons from our tree and noticed that there were roses ready for eating as well. (I eat the petals in salads). No papayas ready just yet). I gathered some yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) too. :) No more avocados left at this point. Oh well. Here's a pic of the coconuts from our tree after I put them in the back of our truck to take to the farm the next day:


~7pm: Dinner was cucumber noodles with cukes from our farm that I harvested before we left, topped with some julienne sun dried tomatoes from a jar that were soaking in olive oil. Eeek! Yeah, olive oil... Oh well. It was yummy at least. :)

I also sprinkled basil flowers on the 'pasta' that I'd gathered at our farm earlier too. Here's a pic I took of the basil flowers in the field...


Exercise:
Not too much today, just harvesting and stuff...

Detox:
Can't remember at this point (2 weeks later) - I figure there was something though as I'd been not eating all that optimally... I can see my skin and hair weren't up to par in the pic. That's sort of a usual thing for me after flying as well.

Female:
I didn't take my temperature this morning yet 'cause my sleeping was still messed up from jet lag and all..

The Rest:
It was really nice to be home. There was a strange smell the night before that we couldn't place. It smelled like something burning or something else, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from or what it was... In the morning we still smelled it and it was worse so we tried to figure it out even more. I finally decided that it was coming from the back or underneath the fridge. My hubby wasn't convinced and thought it was coming from a different area. Then we sort of converged to a similar area and I thought it was coming from the back of the fridge where a little fan was and he thought it was underneath the fridge. It was hard to locate 'cause the smell would sort of come and go in it's intensity. I thought it was related to the fridge's operation 'cause the smell would be more noticeable when the fridge was powering on and less when it was not. At a certain point late in the morning we discovered that it was indeed the fridge 'cause when my hubby was cleaning out the floor behind the fridge it started sparking when it powered on. He promptly unplugged it and we realized that we needed to get a new fridge. LOL Good thing we kept at it and didn't just go off to the farm. It made us rather late to get to the farm for watering, but it saved our house from burning down... My hubby cut the cord so our son wouldn't come and plug it back in when we were gone ('cause he wasn't there at the time and didn't know what was up).

So after going to the farm and watering and foraging we went to the mall and any other place we could think of with refrigerators to see our options. They were much more expensive than we thought they'd be and not all of them on display were available right away. We decided on one at Sears and were going to go back the next day to buy it and get it delivered. They said that if we got it delivered it wouldn't happen 'till Wednesday so there was no rush. The delivery would be free - we pay it upfront and get a rebate that will refund us. Hard to pass that up, especially since they had the best one in our opinion.

Since I'm writing this 2 weeks later I'll keep going with this thread... I went in the next day and saw the same sales guy to buy it. Then it turned out that the stainless steel one we were looking at wasn't the price it said on it and that we'd discussed. That price was apparently for the white model. Ug! We'd talked all about how it was the same as the white model beside it and that must be the difference in price - the sales guys had participated in that discussion too. Doi. There was another sales gal there on Monday who explained the difference in the price between the white models of the stainless steel one we wanted and the white one beside it was that the shelves inside had a slight lip on the sides of the shelves rather than just glass at the sides of the shelves. Quite minor. ANYway... the stainless model was $200 more than we thought and I wasn't prepared to pay for that. I'd gone in alone and didn't have the money for it with me or my hubby to discuss it with. At this point the other white one seemed like a better deal 'cause of the $200 difference. The thing was, they didn't even have the stainless steel one in stock either! Ug! So I went back to the farm and told my hubby about it and he agreed that perhaps we shouldn't get either of them.

We thought about just getting a freezer that opens at the top in order to freeze the water bottles for the farmer's market and leave it at that. Our son could use the little 3/4 fridge we had but weren't using and we didn't really need refrigeration for most things. We used it for left overs from market, but nothing else much. Those freezers are more efficient and cheaper to run, better on the environment... So that's what we did. We got it and brought it home that night. We got one that was the right size to fit where the fridge was, but didn't put it in there 'cause we still had the fridge and didn't have time to move it first.

We were able to plug in the freezer in the middle of the night and had the bottles of water in there to freeze for the farmer's markets. We were buying bags of ice to use for markets in the meantime. The freezer turned out to be not so great for this. It wasn't freezing the water as quickly and solidly as the refrigerator had - and hadn't even frozen one solid after 2 days... We then re-examined the owner's manual and noticed that it said that it was designed to store frozen foods.. so perhaps it didn't get cold enough to freeze things, only cold enough to keep things frozen that were already frozen?!? Ug! We gave it more time and my hubby noticed that it seemed to do better when we had more things in there and theorized that it needed less open space to freeze things. So we've been working on increasing the amount of bottles in there and it's been working better for us. It still takes about a day and a half or two days to freeze the bottles (whereas the fridge would take only overnight or one day), but we haven't been able to fill it up enough quite yet either. It'd be nice to have it full though so we'd always have plenty of the refreeze containers for the larger markets and the day we have two markets and all. So we're keeping it.

On a different note. I pulled out my son's ukulele and used the tuner my dad got me to tune it up. The pegs were a bit rusty so it was a bit more difficult to tune, but it tuned up nicely and I like the sound. So does my hubby. Yay! :) I started to practice the cords I knew and experiment with things with them and trying to find other notes or chords that sound good w/'em. I also looked at another string instrument we had around the same size. It was a banjo thing I guess my mom had and looking at it again I noticed that it had four strings. A banjo uke! Cool! I always liked the way that thing looked, now perhaps I'll know how to tune and play it too! Sweet! :) There were only 3 strings on it and it was very dusty and dirty so I took the strings off and cleaned it up some. I figured I'd bring it into a music store and ask them how best to clean it up further and get it restrung.

I wasn't able to go in right away to get it looked at, and when I did I found that I had to go back another day when the guy who did repairs would be there. That was Friday (the 10th) and he said that it was missing it's bridge, but he could order one fairly inexpensively. He told me a bit about it and will help me string and tune it when the bridge arrives. It should be here at the end of next week. Cool! :) He said it wasn't a top of the line sort of thing even in it's time 'cause it didn't have tension adjustments on the sides and all, but it could still have a nice sound. I like the design of it so I want to find out what it sounds like, so I'm going for it.

In the meantime I've been practicing and playing on my son's uke, which has been fun. I found that I needed to tune it almost every time though and figured it was partly 'cause of the rust on the pegs and more likely 'cause it didn't have a case and was getting untuned in transit. I found a nifty camo case and got it on the spot. Yay! I'm lovin' that case, yeah.

I haven't been playing the harmonica since I got back... want to find the book I have on how to play it here first...

K, enough on this day and updates on that stuff since...

9/20/08 & updates

Sleep:
been catching up well, sleeping extra to recover from back thingy too

Food:
I took pics of most of it...

Thursday's Breakfast:

1/2 a watermelon, non-organic

Thursday's Lunch: more bananas, didn't take a pic of them

Thursday's Dinner: basically the same as Wednesday's, except I skipped the oranges

Yesterday's Breakfast:

It was basically the same as the day before (the other half of the watermelon), so I took a pic of myself with it for y'all so it was a bit different looking. I was also experimenting with the new camera and taking pics of myself while holding it and all. That's why my shoulder looks a bit strange - I was trying to hold it as far away from me as possible. LOL

Yesterday's Lunch:
Just bananas...


Yesterday's Dinner:

Salad of lettuce mix I got from Berkeley Bowl, heirloom tomatoes from the local grocery store and dressing of tahini and lemon juice (like before)... with some button shitake mushrooms & olives on top. It was all organic, but not all optimal... the mushrooms and olives, mainly - they were a splurge. I don't have access to an olive bar with organic olives in water or organic button shitakes, so I splurged. They were raw and organic plants, fresh and all though. The olives were from an olive bar at the Berkeley Bowl, organic in water with salt. I got a variety of them to try, one of them also had lemon juice, some pitted, some not. I rinsed them several times beforehand and soaked them in water a while to get most of the salt out (but they were still a bit salty). I mixed it all up and ate 3 of the mushrooms before remembering to take the pic. oops! Oh well...

Today's Breakfast:

An organic French melon that I don't remember the name of. Nice though. Very aromatic and tasty. :) I ate the ones that weren't cut up too BTW

Today's Lunch:


It was a late lunch 'cause I lost track of time when working on someone else's website before we went to the craft fair today and didn't bring food with me either. I ended up having lunch around when I should have had dinner. Oh well.

I ate the 3 "Hawaiian plantains" - a favorite kind of banana for me - and then had the other bananas about a half hour later. I didn't end up eating 3 of the bananas pictured in the second picture.

Today's Dinner:

I started making dinner about an hour or so after I finished my late lunch. I forgot to take pics of the stuff before I put it together again. Oops. It was just baby spinach with lemon juice (from 2 lemons) and one large heirloom tomato - and the rest of the olives from yesterday on top (after they were rinsed, soaked and rinsed again in water to get salt out). It's all organic.

Yesterday we went to the Berkeley Bowl to get me more food and my dad took a picture of me in the produce area. It's much bigger than you can see there. Soooo much variety. Wow!


Exercise:
I took it easy on Thursday 'cause of the thing with my back. After some experimenting and pondering I figured out that it was probably from trying to sleep on the plane in weird positions during the red-eye flights I had from home to Washington which put my back out of line to begin with. I usually am quite active and get realigned in the process of my life and physical activities, but wasn't as physically active for about a week and a half after that. I figure it had kinda' gotten stuck that way since I wasn't moving it around as much and all. Now that I started using it again more it was trying to unstick itself, which hurt 'cause my muscles were a bit tweaked about it all. So I worked on moving the back vertebrae with the wooden roller my dad has that's like the one I have at home and keeping mobile, but not challenging my muscles much 'till they were ready for it. I got extra sleep and all too. That meant that I didn't go to the gym on Thursday.

I was feeling a bit better by the end of Thursday and changed positions fairly frequently when sleeping that night so that I felt like I could try out some things at the gym on Friday morning. I woke a bit stiff and used the roller again, followed by some Ashtanga (Sun Salutations & some of the sitting poses that twist), which got me less stiff and unstuck enough. I heard some things unsticking, but not quite all of it.

I decided to skip classes 'cause I didn't know what they'd have me do and just do workouts that didn't challenge the muscles in ways that made them tweak out. It went well. I tried out the step machine they had there that we don't have at the gym at home. It's like an endless set of stairs - actual stair-type of stairs. Nifty. I did it for 20 or so minutes. It said I did loads of floors worth of stairs. LOL I guess you'd travel a lot of floors if you were spending that amount of time climbing stairs without landings and all. After that I went and did some free weight dumbbell work for my shoulders: 3 sets each of: side arm raises (can't remember their official name); compound up to the front and out to the side and down then up to the side and to the front and down as one rep; bicep curl up to overhead press and back as one rep. I left after that. I figured that was good enough for getting back to things. I also had slept in a bit and got a late start with all the yoga before showering and leaving, so needed to get back and all. I wasn't sure if I'd played it safe well enough or if I'd figured out what was going on well enough that I wouldn't "feel it" later or not, but it worked out well. I felt even better by the end of the day.

This morning I was a bit stiff again, but not as much as yesterday and I didn't move around as much during the night 'cause I didn't feel I needed to. Yay! I went to the gym earlier and stayed a tad longer. I decided to try out the heavy bags if they had 'em (and if they had gloves for me to use too). They did, but the gloves weren't really heavy bag gloves 'cause they were sort of the gel type, but the padding wasn't at the main knuckle area - more towards the finger knuckles instead. I'm not sure what they're for, perhaps speed bag or something. I had a great workout with the heavy bag though - until it became evident that these gloves weren't gonna' cut it - or my knuckles would (cut), heh. So I stopped the heavy bag after about 10 minutes or so. Too bad, 'cause it was looking like a great workout. But not too bad for other reasons. :)

I noticed that they had a paper on the wall that told you how to use the speed bag and they had speed bags you could get from the desk and use. Cool! I'd never used one before and wanted to try it out. No time like the present, right? Right! :) So I went back to the desk and told them that I wanted to try out the speed bag 'cause I'd never done it before and saw the instructions on the wall. She said that I'd probably wanna' start with the larger of the 3 they had, unless I wanted the smaller ones. I said I'd go with her recommendation and took the large one and went back there. The stands were adjustable and I put it to the lowest setting (of course 'cause I'm short). It's supposed to be set so that the bag's bottom is at the level of the bottom of your chin. It was a bit higher than the bottom of my chin, but it still worked anyway. Guess the bigger one's best for shorties too. ;):D

Apparently the way you do it is hit it and let it hit the back, front and back again before hitting it again - with your other hand. It makes a nifty rhythmic sound and the stand squeaked a little in there too so it was very percussionistic and I found myself sort of mini-dancing to the beat. Nice. Fun! I thoroughly enjoyed it. It didn't seem to be much of a physical workout, but it was a good neuro sort of thing. After about 20 minutes or so of it I decided that I should do some weights and turned in the speed bag and gloves.

I did 3 sets each of the shoulder things I did yesterday and looked for a machine for aductors and abductors, but couldn't find one in that room. When I did find one my body was sort of telling me that I probably should wait a bit more on that one, even though I didn't actually even sit down at it. LOL Gotta' listen to those things, so I did. I did chin-ups with the nifty chin-up thing and explored some other machines too.

My back's still getting better all the time, so I figure I'm treating it how it needs. Yay! :)

Detox:
Been having a tad of gas here and there again. I'm not sure what it is specifically. Perhaps it's still some of the stuff I did before. Since I splurged yesterday and today it would be hard to say if it's new or older stuff, but I was having it before the newer splurges so who knows... maybe it's the traveling and all. Whatever.

I do know that the shitakes were on my breath this morning when I awoke, to my displeasure. I keep learning that about them. It's why they are less than optimal to me, perhaps it's part of why they are less than optimal for Natural Hygiene too. I only ate half of them yesterday so I'll eat the others at some point before I go, but I wanted to space it out a bit.

Female:
day 11 of my cycle, red day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
Yesterday my dad got an ukulele for himself and I'm gonna' practice on it while here. He got me a clip on tuner that I can take back with me for mine too. Yay! That's gonna' make a big difference in my playing or not. He also got me a harmonica that I was gonna' get for myself. Thanks Dad! :) I'll try to take pics of them for y'all at some point and post 'em here.

On Thursday I went and saw Momma Mia with my dad's wife. She'd seen it before and loves it. I liked it too. :) It was quite well done for a musical. The actors did a good job of acting while singing (even though they weren't really singers) and the story did a good job of working in all those ABBA songs and all. It was a cute story too.

Today I went to a craft fair with my dad's wife and her mom. It was fun. I got a couple of green glass vases that look like flowers themselves, sort of. My dad has a print of a Diego Rivera painting of a woman with her back to you that's probably Frida Kahlo. She's embracing the kind of flowers these vases remind me of, so I took a picture with the print behind the vases and put them on a wicker thing that reminds me of the one in the painting. :) Fun. Here it is:

It was hard to get the right angle on it all in order to get the pic without rearranging my dad's whole living room. LOL So I just got what I could to capture the likenesses. :) Here's a pic of them alone so you can see their shape better:

They were pretty inexpensive and I only have one vase at home so I got 'em, not sure how I'm gonna' get 'em home safely though... Sometimes I get flower left-overs from the flower farmers at the farmer's markets and I'm planning on growing flowers at the new farm.

Did I tell you? My hubby told me that the tractor guy finally contacted him and has now mowed the entire 3 acres for us! Yay! He wasn't able to do the discing yet, but should be doing that in about a week or two. Yay!!! Our expansion is in-progress. Whew! I was wondering if it was ever gonna' happen...

Today we looked for some brown jeans for me. I'd love some for home - great for farming and farmer's markets, but I'm having a hard time finding any that are my size. It's hard to find actual brown denim jeans to begin with and then they've all been in larger sizes than fit me. :( Perhaps some time I'll find some. The guy at the Army/Navy surplus store said that we might be able to find some at a kid's store that had work clothes for kids. We're gonna' call 'em Monday and see.

Let's see, what else has happened? Hmmm... can't remember right now. I'm pretty tired. Guess I'll just go to sleep and post about anything I forgot about another day.

Nightie Night! :)

update: it wouldn't post correctly last night, so I'm posting it on Sunday morning, not sure if it will say Saturday or Sunday at the top....