This morning it dawned on me that ragweed allergies are my presiding bodily irritation. It's been several days since I've been so queasy that I couldn't work my way through it and so this week I'm trying to force a little fog out of my brain so that I can evaluate how things are standing after this "crisis" season and hopefully get back on track.

You may remember that I had been sharing with you how I manage my homestead and hoped that with proper management I would be able to better weather any storms and find our normal more quickly.

Thankfully, my first storm was one that is the result of blessing rather than a trial and that I can fairly accurately predict when the clouds will pass. I'm also thankful that this first trimester's queasiness (I've actually only gotten sick-sick during my second pregnancy) was more mild than some I've experienced. Those mild ones all turned out to be baby boys, so I'm throwing out my official prediction that our family pattern stands and our next baby will be a boy. I'll let you know for sure probably sometime in March.

So now it's time to assess the damage.


{In The Garden}

I did keep the vegetable garden and perennial gardens relatively weed-free. (Do the peas count? They're done and need to be tilled under.)

 I did not keep the corn field weeded. And you know what? I'm glad! I would have been pretty upset to waste my time simply for those raccoons that gorged, and later died, in that cornfield to have had a weed-free garden patch to pillage. 

I did not thresh the meager wheat and oat harvest. The shocks are still bundled in the shed if rodents haven't picked the heads clean by now. Tom Kitten is getting quite fat despite his complete lack of a commercial diet so hopefully he's keeping on top of that situation for me. I'd like for my husband to build me a grain thresher before I start. The kernels are fragile this year (are they too dry??) and beating them out is shattering them and my one attempt at threshing resulted in picking them out by hand. I'm not going to do that for what will amount to $5 of seed grain. I'm frugal, but my time is too valuable for that. 

I did manage to keep the cucumber seedlings alive in the basement and transplant them after I killed first crop with orange oil. 

I did harvest parsnip and lettuce seed. 

I did pull out all of the bitter greens, worm eaten brassicas, and clean up the coon-devastated corn patch. We harvested 11 nearly mature ears and in the end I had one lonely stalk of corn left standing with an ear that was just too immature to pick yet.... it was gone the next morning. I'll bet you'll never guess who ate it. 

{In The Barnyard}

I did manage to help divide the hog carcasses, a fact of which I am quite proud. It was a good thing that I did it too because at one point I caught my husband trying to leave all the bacon under the spareribs!!!!! Not on purpose of course because I think he'd raise hogs just for the bacon. It was also a good thing because I needed that extra bacon to try an experimental nitrate-free curing recipe that ruined the meat :(

I did not manage to keep on top of our egg collection and am finally through those eggs where I was having to crack them in a bowl first because many were rotten from sitting in the barn so long. 

I also failed to keep on top of the boys and their varmint control. At last count, we're down 12!!! broiler chicks since letting them in the pasture nearly two weeks ago!! Until this morning they've just disappeared, but today we found our first headless bird causing us to think skunk. Do skunks eat fly bait? Our deer netting system is in serious need of repairs from children pulling it either up or down to get past it. I suppose they could be how Tom Kitten is getting to be so plump, but then I imagine that he would leave some evidence of his pursuits. It would be a shame if he developed a taste for poultry and we had to get rid of him, he's such a sweet kitten. (But I think I know where to find a good home for him, right Bekki?)

{In The Home}

I did keep the laundry system relatively under control. Kind of. I kept the baskets in the bathtub washed and dried. I kept it folded. 

I did not keep it put away. Which created quite a problem. The children couldn't figure out what to wear each day. I couldn't understand this because the baskets were empty, but I was not going upstairs every day and seeing why they were empty. It turns out that no one was bringing their laundry downstairs and it was just piling up in the closet floor upstairs. The result of this situation was that I needed to do about 6 loads of laundry over the last few days to get back on track. 

I did not hang laundry on the line. Not once. It wasn't my fault really. One of the children decided to hang from it and snap it and my husband has yet to rehang it (he can pull it much more taut than I can). But it is my fault really. I could remind him more than occasionally and when it isn't dark outside, but I'm not and I might just subconsciously be doing it so I don't have to worry about lugging it outdoors. 

I did not get the baby dressed most of this month. Skin is so much easier to wipe down than clothes and diapers are easily disposed of without needing stain-sticked. 

I did keep the floors mopped at least once a week, sometimes on Monday like I'm supposed to, sometimes not. But if you remember I get help from my husband with that. 

I did not Scrub-A-Room on Tuesdays once last month, but I did delegate it to my two oldest children this week since they weren't busy and were bugging me about doing frivolous things on the computer. 

I did not do my weekly kitchen cleaning except for once, last week. I'll bet you can guess why the carpenter ants are back. I'm thankful for a small kitchen that can easily be brought back into good enough condition quickly. 

I did not do most of the shopping, the Thursday chore, but only joined my husband maybe once. 

I did keep on top of the ironing pile and was pleasantly surprised with how small it was each week. I wonder why?!! This weeks' pile is as big as the rest combined. 

I did not manage to clean the bathroom once. Gross, right? I did manage to delegate it and make sure it was done each week, so not so gross after all. 

Our Saturday work completely fell to the wayside. It hasn't been done once. Unless you count the basement. The boys did clean that up enough to work to get the hog's processed. At least the side they were working on.

I did not blog very much. What like eight posts in five weeks? We all know how out of character that is for me! Sorry! In all honesty, it would seem that since this is the second time I have travelled through the first trimester as a blogger, I don't blog well during it. I experience great discouragement about some of the choices that I've made as a wife and mother. I worry about my priorities, time management, homeschooling choices, whether homesteading is the best thing I could be doing during this season of life with small children, etc., etc.... I completely lose my focus in the fog. I sat down to draft my the homeschooling post for the home management series and without focus I was too afraid to publish it because of how unconventionally I approach education. I wanted to run for the nearest $500 boxed curriculum. (Thankfully, my budget restrains me there!) Anyway, I'm able to think about writing again and this time around I didn't close down my blog like last time! But I'll bet there are only about 5 of you that remember that. 

I did not take very many photos of anything either. Including August's garden. Which is a shame because it would have been interesting to see the destruction as the coons ravaged my corn and squash plants died one by one. 

I washed my hair! Once I ran out of my homemade products, I never remembered to make new until I was already in the shower. I didn't much care either because the hormonal influx has made most of my hair greasier than normal so I somewhat hoped the shampoo would strip that out. I'm somewhat glad I did because I've been noticing over the last couple of days that I keep scratching my scalp which convinces me that a shampoo-less hair regime works best for me. 

{In The Schoolroom}

I did guide the children through their annual standardized testing last week, even though we finished a day behind schedule. 

I did not do much else. Most reading, the new nature journaling habit, copywork, didn't get done as I struggled to keep food on the table and weeds out of the garden. 

I did not take my children to the library. They're mad at me for it too!

I did not help Hannah keep up with her correspondence. (If her pen-pals' mothers are reading this, tell your daughters I'm sorry. I'd let her go at it alone, but then the poor girls couldn't read it anyway ;) )

{In The Kitchen}
I did manage to eat way too many carbs and a surprising amount of sweets. Typically, my first trimester diet is heavy protein and vegetables and NO sugar. My sweet tooth packs up and leaves on vacation until about the 13-14th week in pregnancies past. Not so this time around. And it's a good thing that the zucchini are doing so poorly this year. After surviving on them in years past, I could barely stomach more than a few bites. With plenty of pork, chicken, and tomatoes coming in the last couple weeks, my diet trend is making a change for the better.

I did not manage to put up a significant amount of produce. I did put up some pickled cucumbers, but I'm hoping to do my own if I can manage a late crop harvest. Otherwise, the tomatoes that are coming in are filling up freezer bags until I have enough to can. I'm thinking about some peaches, green beans (if the lush vines ever produce!), and sweet corn over the next month. Maybe one crop per week?

I did not manage to make a single batch of cheese. Not to mention experiment with new ones. I did try and fail 3 times, none of which were technically my fault. The first batch I started without realizing I didn't have a thermometer, the second and third were most likely the result of old rennet. Apparently when it lists the shelf life, it means it.

Well I think that just about covers everything. I don't mean for this to be either an encouragement or discouragement to you. We're all in different places in life, and I simply am trying to evaluate the systems I've put in place for our family and since I've been sharing them with you I feel it may be just as useful for you to see how they have failed or succeeded. 

How do you handle home management during times of crisis?