A Natural Home

I slept in this morning and went down stairs to check the woodburning stove. I spent 30 minutes adding little pieces of wood to the hot embers, blowing on the sticks and hots coals to rekindle the flames.  While doing all of this I thought of how things currently are in the economy and the environment.

We have burned up the wood in our fire box and let is die down to hot coals, we can rebuld the fire with trash (after all trash does burn as evident by the trailer homes I drive by at dusk and they are burning trash in  metal barrel in the yard) or we can rebuild it with carefully selected wood. Each piece added to build a roaring fire that will last, cook our meals, heat our home etc…. If I quickly build it, well, it konks out just as quickly.  Burning fast and hard, with little care.  Better to chomp a little at a time on the wood it is fed, slowly consuming, slowly building.

So, where am I going with all of this?  I am not really completely sure. I felt this flash of something while I was building the fire back up.  What if I could rebuild the world, would I throw trash on it, or would I select the best wood I could and rebuild a world that would burn strong, bright, and long into our future.

Okay, so after talking to a bazillion people (well maybe only 5), about redoing the web site and getting these OMG quotes for redoing this and redoing that, I decided to just do it myself.

Yes, I is taking forever. Yes, at times, while I am nursing the baby she reaches up and pounds on the keyboard and adds a few extra HTML codes that I did not want, but I am doing it.

Fell in love with a few new toys, like sothink DHTML menu. LOVE IT! I used to have this a few years ago and used it quite a bit. I loved how quickly the code could be writter for drop down menus. It was easy and fairly painless. I spent about 4 hours getting it just right and put it on every page.  I uploaded it to the web and discovered to my pain and headaches that only a third of the code was working. Apparently the “free” model I was using would only let you do 3 links, OOPS! Of course I was going to buy it anyways, but I wish they would have said something about it , or I would have bought it to begin with and not messed with the “free” model.

The site is NOT done, by anymeans. For instance, you are still reading the blog under the old “skin”. The contact form is not working in HTML, and the dealers page still needs to be interactive with drop down menus, but we are getting there.

If you will note that not every item has its own page right now. Again, the plan is for each item to have its own page by the end of the week.

So please stop by and let us know what you think.

One of those Dreary Ohio days. Is it sleet? Is it snow? is it slow? Not sure what, but it is a bit nippy in the air, and I am thinking were are finally hitting “winter” in Ohio.

Last week was FAB, lovely weather. The kind of days in Fall that I love. You need a light jacket- you can walk and walk in the sunshine. The leaves have all fallen at this point, but you feel good about raking them up into piles and trouncing. The kind of day you like throwing feed at the chickens, sweeping the side walk, building a chicken coop, and riding the lawn mower for the last time. The kind of day that just make you feel super to be alive!

Today is not one of those days. It is gloomy and cloudy, and spitting snow/sleet/ or something akin to both. I read that central ohio has as many grey days as seattle ,washington. That makes sense. I think way too many people suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) in central Ohio, too many cloudy days.

As I am sitting looking out at the world (well my horseshoe driveway) I am thinking, “I would love a little more sunshine right now”. I am thinking, “it is time to dig out the winter coats and change into my favorite Blondo boots, time to pull the sweaters from the tub and air them out.” Winter is coming, no stopping her, no denying her presence.

So I ask the weather man is it sleet? Snow? or something in between.

Check us out at anaturalhome.mobi We just finished our little mobile site yesterday, and YES it has some quirks, but I think it is pretty cute. We also purchased some other domains to use later. With so many people on the mini web now, we decided to make ourselves more accessible. So next time you pull out your i phone, check out anaturalhome.mobi and let us know what you think.

Today is a day to ponder, a day for a bit of grieving, and a bit of sorrow. We have given a little more of our freedoms away. A little more of our souls. People gave away a little more money to this and a little more to that, while people have less “extra” income to spend on things. Tax levys were passed, that should not have been, and issues were voted on that were silly and more destructive than people realise.

We need to forget about getting it easy. Nothing worthwhile is easy, you need to work for it, and appreciate it. We have become a nation of people wanting things on a platter.  Stressed out and not wanting to think, we let others increasingly do it for us. We need to stop, we need to think, we need to make our own destiny.

Where will we be in 5 years? I have to wonder.

Yesterday, we had a great deal of fun. Once a year we have a fall dress up party, some of us call it Halloween, but since it was the day after, well it was more of a happy harvest party.

From 9 months to 85, we had a gamet of people at the party, but we all had one thing in common good natural food and great wine.

A friend of mine joked that we Had “Rednecks to Doctors there”, and really that was the case to some extent (however, not evenyone showed up who was going to come.).

We sat around talked politics, sometimes we voices were raised, and one person walked off, but it was all in good fun and we had some good things to say about both parties. To be honest, I will be happy to have the election over with I am fed up with all the commercials etc. I think everyone at the party agreed to this, we were all tired of the bombardment.

As for the food, we had organic greens, organic chicken noodles (not our chickens, LOL), organic pies, brownies, thai noodles, rice, lentil soup, and a bunch of other things I have no idea what they were but they were GOOD.

Hubby grilled 30 pieces of chicken, it was all gone.  The bread was baked in our new Kitchen Queen wood cook stove (we just installed it 2 days ago). It was very heavy, about 750 lbs. We purchased it to heat the house and the cook. It is such a nice looking stove that many people just enjoyed looking at the stove and warming themselves.

After dinner we had a nice bonfire, and we stood ready with hoses and buckets of water just in case. We took all the tall grass in a 10 foot perimeter and had cut ti down to cut back on the chance of fire.  After the fire had died down, we had a nice gentle rain to put the fire out.

As people went home for the evening, everyone felt full of good food and nice conversation. We are blessed to have good fortune in life, what a happy harvest party!

(oops I found this draft that I never published- it is a fun event that happens every year in the summer- thought you might like to read about it)

Every year  all the Amish and many of the companies in the area (including ours) donate product and services to be auctioned off to help pay for medical bills in the community.

Months have gone into the planning and the days before the event everyone is stressed and running around trying to get last minute things done. Alvin’s family was in charge of getting donations and organizing the set up.

It was a frenzy of activity as black hats and white bonnets swarmed the auction area putting up tents, setting up chairs and tables.  The Amish women were busy making baked goods and teas.  The kids were running thru the parking lot with the hint of excitement in the air.

On saturday, the parking lot was packed. The school yard was packed with buggies, the cemetary had horses teathered nearby, and there were local police officers directing traffic. It seemed that all the Amish in the area had come out for the auction.

Quilts, beds, clocks, toys, chairs, tools, cedar boxes are more where being auctioned off for the higest bid in hopes of bringing much needed capital to the medical coffers.  Since the Amish do not have insurance, all the money made from the auction goes to pay for hospital bills that families can not cover.

There were tons of “englishers” non Amish there hoping to get a great deal on a quilt or piece of furniture. Suddenly pieces that would normally go for $800 were going for $2600 and up. This is a good thing as the money goes to a good cause and the community needed the extra funds.