Low-Sodium Diet

Eating a diet that is low in sodium is harder than one might think. We don't keep a salt shaker on the table and I don't add salt to my cooking. I use mostly dried herbs for seasoning, and most of what we eat is homemade--much easier to control salt intake. I read food labels and do my best, almost all the time, to have my kids eat fresh fruit and vegetables rather than packaged, ready-made snacks.

As a new mom, sugar was my biggest concern when feeding my kids. Until my eldest son was diagnosed with childhood nephrotic syndrome, I worried more about sugar and barely glanced at the sodium content on food labels. While I still avoid sugary snacks for my kids, salt has become equally as unwanted for my family. The trouble is, food doesn't have to taste salty to actually be loaded with the unhealthy stuff.

Let me backtrack and explain why we attempt a low(er) sodium diet in our home. Salt leads to fluid retention, a symptom of nephrotic syndrome. When protein leaves my son's body in his urine, his organs and tissue begin to swell with fluid. As it was explained to me by our specialist, salt exacerbates the problem during a relapse of the syndrome. Currently, we are fighting off a relapse and may have to resume prednisone  treatment. Just reading the list of side-effects from this life-saving medication makes me panic inside. Panic inside. But if it turns out that he goes on it again, we resume our calcium and vitamin D supplements, maintain our healthy lifestyle, and be grateful that there is a treatment for this syndrome. And we hope he outgrows it soon. In the meantime, eating as little salt as possible while he has protein in his urine is a no-brainer. But, like I said, it's harder than you think.

The other day, searching for a snack for the boys, I reached for salted peanuts. I checked the label. In one third of a cup (about what I would have given them each) there is 6% of an adults daily sodium. Not bad, I thought, but spied some butter toffee nuts left over from Christmas. 13% of an adult's daily salt intake in the same amount of nuts. And they don't taste salty. Where I am headed with this, you can probably guess, is we have to really check the labels on everything we feed our families. Since that day I have looked for more information on low-sodium diets. I read on one site that for a snack to be considered "low-sodium" it should have fewer than 140 mg salt/serving. Back to the nuts. A third cup of salted nuts has 150 mg of salt, while a third cup of butter toffee nuts has 320 mg of salt. Blow my mind. They had an orange instead.

I am very interested to hear from parents of children with nephrotic syndrome. If you would like to start a conversation, please comment and we can email from there. We are less than a year into this and quite possibly relapsing now. I am grateful that there is a treatment, so grateful, but I would like to hear your experience with prednisone. My thoughts very often turn to those families that might not find such a simple treatment for a sick child, and my heart breaks for them. Go hold your babies close.

First-Attempt Quilt

I have been trying to keep busy this winter. You might recall I found some fabric in a charity shop before Christmas. I added to that collection over the holidays and decided to attempt a quilt. After enjoying hours of looking at patterns, I chose one that I thought I could handle.

I have worked on it after the kids are in bed, and when Husband was home on days off. It is coming along nicely but I have not decided if quilting is something I will take on as a pastime. Once I saw all the squares lying out together, I thought I might like to try another and do a better job of it. Some of my squares are quite "out of whack" but others are surprisingly neat and tidy. I can understand why people love making quilts--it is very satisfying to see the work come out as planned.

the material I used was either free or purchased at second-hand shops.
I purchased the white material and the backing (below).

 Since material and batting are costly, I wanted to learn to quilt using inexpensive material. I am not a fan of purple, but in all the colorful material cost about $4. The backing cost about $7 on sale, and the white was $6. The other day I found batting for $13, which would bring the cost of making this quilt to about $30 Canadian.

 I've finished the quilt top and will leave the final steps until next winter. In the meantime, I've cut the material for a baby quilt (a post and pictures to come soon!)and would like to finish it entirely before the weather gets nice enough that I'm outside every day. It was -20C in the wind today--I expect getting the baby quilt finished in time shouldn't be a problem!

I used to work at the women's shelter in town. When women and children leave the shelter to start a new life on their own, the shelter gives them each a clean new blanket to take with them. For Christmas next year, I plan to donate this blanket to a woman leaving a domestic violence situation, and if I can get one done I plan to add a crocheted baby afghan to the donation. Have you attempted a new craft this winter?

Rock Work

We are a family that loves rocks. Husband brings home landscaping rock and I continually find rocks in my boys' coat pockets. Our piece of land is very rocky, as I've mentioned, and before winter settled in for the year I started to use the rock as part of my landscaping plan.

I believe that we can have a beautiful yard without breaking the bank, and our philosophy is that if life gives you lemons you should make lemonade (or rock walls out of rocks, as the case may be). With that in mind I started two rock wall flower beds this fall. The two are joined by a wide stone path that can accommodate our four-wheeler and trailer or a ride-on mower (when we get one).

 The plan is to fill the rock wall with topsoil and have plants spilling down the sides of the walls, on either side of my stone path.

The dirt-covered rocks were picked from the topsoil
as we returned it from the pile it was in all summer. To
level the soil and plant grass we picked rocks...and picked...
and picked....

I ran out of time and the snow fell, so these walls will have to be filled with soil and planted in the spring. So many projects to look forward to!

This is just one of the stone paths that we have planned for our yard. I love the different colours of the rocks and really enjoy placing them in a pattern on the ground. Have you got a favorite garden pastime? 

Tree Update

This summer, before our house even arrived, we planted a shelter belt of trees along the main grid road approaching our acreage, and along the lane way to our yard. If you have been following the blog you might remember that I had ordered 180 one-year-old maple, 200 one-year-old poplar and 120 three-year-old spruce. This chunk of land is extremely rocky so it felt like we had to dig 3 holes for every tree we planted. It might not have been that bad, but by the time 500 trees were in the ground we were T.I.R.E.D. We had a lot going on at the time--if you're interested you can read more here.

We rented a post-hole auger for the weekend and Husband dug the holes. I followed with a bucket o' trees while we kept the boxes of trees moist in the shade. It is important to not let the roots dry out.

We began by staking a twine out in a straight line and using a measuring tape to space the trees. But our land is so rocky we ended up pacing off the distance and doing our best to keep things straight and evenly spaced in spite of the rocks.

You can faintly see the row of dark circles--holes waiting for Colorado Spruce

Spruce trees were spaced 10-12 feet apart, with a 16 foot spacing between the next row of trees (Northwest Poplar). We checked that the roots were loose and not bound up in a coil, and planted them to the depth that they had been at the nursery. In the picture below, you can see the darker line on the tree stem. Once it was planted and the hole filled I stepped all around the tree to ensure there were no air pockets in the hole. Then on to the next tree.

The trees are hard to see, but the row
 goes beyond the orange pail in the distance

The trees needed a deep watering once they were planted. It took almost 4 days to do all the planting and watering--in part because of the rocky terrain and also because we were using a long trailer to haul the water tank for watering. It was awkward to get into position so that the gravity-feed tank and hose could even reach the trees. I'm very thankful that we now have a water tank in a small trailer that I pull behind our quad. Once we were living at the house and had running water it was much easier to care for the trees.

We tried to water every couple of weeks during summer. It is recommended to water once a week during the first year, every two weeks the second year, and so on. For deciduous trees, give one last deep watering in August, and then stop. You do not want new growth to begin before winter. For evergreens, water late into fall and a generous final drink after deciduous trees have lost their leaves. The Government of Canada had a very helpful site, but since the prairie shelter belt program was cancelled the website no longer exists. You can still find plenty of information on line; I use the Alberta Ag and Rural Development site if I have any concerns about our trees.

All of the trees in these photos were purchased at treetime.ca. I was very pleased with the condition of the trees when they arrived, and I was especially happy that delivery was free. The trees arrived in 3 very large boxes, so delivery was an issue for me. Along with the poplar, maple and spruce, I also ordered Amur Maple, Siberian Larch and Paper Birch. I planted all of these in a plot so it was faster to water them. This year we will decide where to put them as we work on landscaping the yard. As of the fall, all of the larch had been eaten off by insects or animals, but the maple and birch appeared to be doing well.

birch trees in the summer

We have had some extreme winds this winter. In a two-story house it can seem especially windy, so I am considering where to plant trees this summer in hopes of blocking the west winds in the future. I don't want to block my view so will strategically place trees along the edge of the lawn. More on that when the time comes! This is an existing yard site so we have mature spruce and lilacs to the east and a hillside and bush to the north and somewhat to the west. Along the north, as well, our shelter belt trees curve along the lane and along the hill. When those trees grow up we will have wonderful shelter.

This winter we had enough snowfall to bury our little spruce trees in a nice insulated blanket of snow. Around Christmas things warmed up and a lot of that snow melted, and I got concerned that they would be exposed to the cold and wind--and there has been plenty of that! We have had more snow now, though, and the trees are once again tucked into a snow bank.

 Above, a spruce tree in the snow. Below, you can barely see the top of the next tree over. It is the little point to the left of the center of the picture.

I am looking forward to seeing how our trees fared over the winter. There are a few spruce that have browned off, so I might get a few replacements when I can assess how many I will need. I would also like to find some native trees in ditches and out in my dad's pastures to see if they do better than nursery-grown seedlings. But I will leave that post for another day!

Worth a Try

I follow the blog Little Home in the Country and have been introduced by Sherri to the Ripe Near Me initiative. What a great idea! Any gardener has (hopefully) experienced an excess of produce at one time or another. This site seems like a fabulous way to swap or sell that crop, and meet like-minded folks in your own community at the same time. Even if you are not a gardener, it is a way to locate locally grown food.

The site is new and there are (as yet) no members in my area. Hopefully we can get the word out and, by the time harvest rolls around, share some of our garden's bounty!

Happy gardening!

Still Kickin'

Well, February is here and along with it the annual struggle to put one foot in front of the other. Temperatures have been -20C and colder for what seems like forever. I consider myself so lucky that I don't have to struggle my kids out the door to a sitter everyday so I can rush in the frigid cold to get to work. Having said that, the daily routine can get, well, monotonous when going outside or into the basement are taken off the agenda. That said, we can't play in the basement anymore because it is now framed and the stack of drywall takes up all the free floor space. As well, the garage is being insulated and I hope to be able to park in it within days!

Winter can wear on us, but as I tell my 4 year old, busy people are happy people. Just because we are indoors does not mean we need to mope or spend our time in front of the television (although that sometimes happens, AHEM!!)

Here are some shots of the projects that are taking place around here these days.

Crocheting dishclothes is the perfect busy-work while watching 'lympics with 4 year old :)

headboard stripped of varnish and ready for a good sanding.
I may have to leave it raw for some time-- 4 year old refuses to let me paint it!

I looooove how this $3 garage sale chair turned out.
It is the 2 year old's chair--painted--so that it can be hosed down after meals!

Did I mention I love this chair?

My little brown rocker that matches this chair is still at the farm and my kids fight over who gets to sit in it. I found this chair at the local charity shop, another $3 find. I stripped it and painted it red and gave it a rough sanding. The boys keep it in the bathroom so they can reach the sink to wash their hands.

The winter has gone by so much faster in our new home. We have visits from gramma and we go to the farm often. Husband is away working so staying busy is really important. How are you passing the time this winter?

Score!

Oh, I just love to find a good deal! I take my kids to see the specialist every three months. We drive about an hour and a half to get there, and across the street from the paediatrician is the Mennonite Closet, a thrift store. At our appointment in the summer I noticed this chair for $60.

Patience pays off. I loved the chair but hated to spend $60 when there were so many other things we needed more in our new house. We stopped by the store on our way to my brother's wedding and though it was still there the price had not dropped. Today I was amazed that the chair had not sold, and the price had been reduced to $40. We snapped it up and were thrilled when he sold it to us for $30. It has a new home in our master bedroom.

I always check the material bins when I am in thrift stores. You can find unique patterns of fabric that might be unavailable or just very expensive at the fabric store. Today I found 4 little bundles of material and the fellow at the store also reduced those prices.

We also got some wonderful old wooden skis that will add character to the bar-in-the-basement that we have planned. All in all, it was a nice day out as a family and the appointments for the kids went well. I hope you are finding ways to keep busy this winter!