Good Tuesday Morning!

Well I have made an executive decision... I am staying away from video games (hopefully) until winter. So any of my facebook friends out there whom I play games with, sorry but. I really do have better things96 to do right now.

In the next couple days I am going to go out and start "scraping" the top soil off of the spot we are going to build the house and put it either in the "in ground" garden spot or one of the various pots I have picked up. Why waste top soil?

On today's list of "Chores" is total kitchen cleaning, now if the house will warm up... I have trouble getting started when it's cool out, and with an outside temp of 48 degrees (up 10 since the kids left) I don't want to do much.

Speaking of the kids, they are in their last week of school; I am still interested in looking into homeschooling to at least give them extra info. It seems at least my girls have not had any world history at all and they are entering 6th grade. I have a big problem with that, I mentioned the name Ramses and they had no idea that it was the name of an Egyptian Pharaoh... they didn't know what Pharaoh meant either. I have a bigger problem with that, since when do school not teach about Egypt?

Something I am hopefully going to be able to doing the weeks to come is "a Book a Day", and then write about the book here, the hope is I'll get one done a day, depends on the day really but we will see what I can manage. Later today I am hoping to write a post about this book:

This is "Homesteading How to Find New Independence on the Land" by Gene Logsdon, ISBN# 0-87857-068-3. Mine is a 9th printing from June 1978, the original copyright is 1973, published by Rodale Press Inc.

I have read this book before and actually many times, but I figured giving a summery after a good re-reading of it will help people who have never heard of the book decide if it will help them. This idea behind a "book a day" is because I do have a stack of books needing to be read, and as I have some odd titles that I have picked up at yard sales, thrift stores,used book stores; I'd like to share them.

I have also been told by an acquaintance that Carla Emery's "Encyclopedia of Country Living" is their bible on Homesteading so once I can get a copy (it's on my wishlist now btw) I'll see what it has to offer us here. Well that's it for now I hope everyone had a good weekend!

Be Well and Blessed Be...

Hard working Morning

This morning we spent after breakfast of course, working on the garden. Which I have been putting off due to the heat, which in my opinion has be ridiculous. I started with finishing the digging out of our squash/pumpkin bed; which btw.. has a little more than that. I had my son putting up some strings on my bean bed for my white rice beans to grow up.

After about 20 minutes of using our pic ax on the garden bed (sooo much better soil this year goat manure ROCKS!), I stopped to plant the bean bed.

Pardon the brightness for some reason the camera is acting up... Anywho, what I did here was leave a space in the middle for my tiger's eye beans once I find where they disappeared too. For the rest I planted each type for three poles a piece. WE have Kentucky Wonder (old homestead), Missouri Wonder, Chinese Red Noodle, Taiwanese Black seeded, and my White Rice bean. For now I have our soaker hose running through it, but we are thinking of moving it over to the "other" bed and getting a second one for the beans.

This little thing is a tomato believe it or not, as I transplanted 3 pots worth of them this morning as well this one I think is the Bonnie Best. The other 2 pots where Amish Paste Tomatoes. The interesting thing here is I put these in the spot I had the Zucchini last year and the soil there was better than the bean bed (this year) has! So I have big hopes for these three sets of plants! WE have plans for canning tomato sauce that are completely home "grown". I do still have to find places for the others once they look big enough, also for the pepper plants that are finally growing halfway decently. I -promise- to get my plants started earlier next year (watch I'll forget and in March remember suddenly).

...and here is the big project from today. This bed has: cucumbers, bitter melon, regular melons, summer squash, and pumpkins. One of the pumpkins is the Lady Godiva's for eating seeds, the kids wanted to eat pumpkin seeds so we are giving them a try. I am using the lousy tomato cages we had last year to grow lemon and Dragon's egg cucumbers on and the Bitter melon as well. I do wondered about the bitter melon though as I noticed the seeds were huge! Anyone out there grown them before that can tell me something about them? We are growing them for the fact that Silver is a diabetic and it is suppose to help with blood sugar levels.

I had planted some Tigger melon's over by our dogs as I have a cow panel to support one of the "wild" roses that I wanted to save. So I planted my smaller melons and a couple of cucumbers there next to the cow panel in the hopes of having them grow up it. Still waiting on them to sprout and start growing, however the Bleeding Hearts I planted there have started flowering already I am planning to get a picture of them soon. One of the Dahlia's have started growing and something else I planted there that I can't recall it's name; but I am sure it will look nice.

Potato Update:

My potatoes are doing amazing I'm going to take a picture maybe tomorrow with a tape measure if I can find it. I have run out of the straw we bought as this morning they were sooo tall I had one of my girls go out and cover them again. I hope they will be OK until I can get some more around the first. So the potatoes in straw do work well so far when it's time to "dig out" the finished product we will see what we get.

I have been surprised that with all the heat the cilantro has not bolted yet, as it's still to small to cut any yet too. The chives are moving along very slowly, and the Dill seems to like it's small pot. My other herbs are seeming to grow but I still am unsure as to which ones came up. I'll figure it out eventually.

Silver was going to work on the chicken coop this morning but because of the temperatures this morning/now his hands got cold and he couldn't hold the hammer any more. As I am writing this the outside temperature is 49 degrees and that was at 2:12 pm. So have had a definite difference in temperatures in the last few days.

Well that's it for now and the next 2 days we are going to be spending shopping for groceries that I'll be glad when I don't have to buy anymore. We are going to show our newest neighbors the way to the discount grocer Monday as they are not open on Sundays.

Be Well and Blessed Be...

How did you spend Mother's Day?

I spent mine building half a chicken coop, and digging my bean bed where my peppers grew last year. Had a nice hot bath, and got the kids to do some outside cleaning without the use of a sweet bribe.

Either later today or tomorrow we should be finishing the chicken coop and I have a vining plant bed to dig out. Here is the coop as we worked on it:

This is the first part of it the shortest side of the coop as we are going to give it a big angled roof.

Here is the same side attached to the landscape timber that will be against the ground, also in the spot it will be when finished. Incidentally these aside from the timbers are 2X3X8's

Here is the "tall" side it is a little taller than me and Silver, it will "butt" the end of the yard and the top will all be screened windows for air and light. During the winter we are planning to just put plastic over it to still allow for natural light but without the bad wind.

Same side now laying on the ground so we can put the leftover paneling on the outside, we are leaving a pretty good sized gap for the door as we want to make sure the turkeys can get in and out as well.

Here, we have connected the two sides with the roof rafters and small pieces of the timbers at the bottom. The paneling is up on the front and most of the back. Eventually we are going to build external nest boxes that we are going to accatch to the back of the coop and give them a top opening so we don't have to reach into the nest from the front to check them.

Paneling added to the short side, where I took the picture is going to have some kind of door eventually. We are not putting in a floor as what my plan is, is to use straw on the ground and put new down once a month then after a year completely clear it out and put it on the compost pile and start again. Silver suggested adding wood shavings in the middle of the month.

Here is a shot from the back.

Now like I said I also dug out a bed for my bean plants, and that it was where my peppers were last year. Well, I did have a nice surprise when I went out and started digging. First I noticed since this was one of the spots I used the goat manure last year that there was tons of clover growing. Now, there is no clover growing any where else; but where I put the goat manure. Second is that the ground was a lot nicer looking when I dug it up, and I did not hit clay as soon as I did last year. That must mean that I am slowly making the soil there better. It was also much easier to turn the soil over than it was last year.

Here is what I have done so far:

Silver set up the upright for this and I am hunting up saplings to use for the beans. This is my first time growing pole beans so I'm not sure exactly the best route for this. I am going to try some heavy twine on the one end with them attached in the ground with the tent stakes from last year. If you look carefully at this picture in the upper left corner you can tell what the soil color normally looks like this year this bed is much, much darker and better looking. It also have a lot more worms in it than I saw last year. You'll see my little path on the right and then next to that is where my vining plants are going to go. pumpkins, squashes, and watermelons. I have already put out cucumbers in a flower bed I started as it has a "cow panel" (heavy wire panel), I do hope they do well there.

Well I am planning hopefully to get out and dig out that vine bed in a couple hours so I'm going to get back to my house work now.

Be Well and Blessed Be...

Surprise In the Garden

The title says it all I had a lovely surprise in my garden today, specifically 3 surprises. The grapes that I bought before we moved here and we planted last year that I thought had died have leaves on them!

It was a total shock when I was out back by where they were this morning and I noticed green by where I planted them. So I walked closed and there they were growing as if they never had any problems last year!

Nice and green even though the leaves are tiny they are growing!

This one seems to have leaves on one of the former branches and not complete new growth! I hope that means it will produce faster.

I know it might be another year before I get something out of these but to know they are growing is good enough for me right now. Considering I thought they were totally dead. My guess is they used that first year to grow tons of roots and acclimate to the local soil and climate, and now they will grow more up top. I am hoping in a month or 2, to get a wine kit and start learning the process for wine making as eventually I do plan on making my own wines. I really want to do a dandelion, a rose, and elderberry wines. We've got tons of wild roses all over the place here, later this summer when it's in bloom I'm gonna get a picture of the one white one we have. I have never seen a white while rose before so I am hoping to eventually get some cuttings and propagate it around a bit.

As for my grapes a little while ago I went out and cut all the dead off them and put a little straw around them and probably tomorrow or the next day I'm going to put more on them. Tomorrow we are suppose to make the chicken coop. The chickens seem to like their outdoor yard and the turkeys seem to be starting to loose their head feathers and I do think we have a pair as one appears to be much bigger than the other. Silver thinks we should name them "Christmas" and "Thanksgiving", it is an interesting idea as we are going to butcher these two. The plan is to buy some heritage turkey's next year.

So far my new batch of chickens seem to be doing well, and none have died; so I do hope they stay that healthy. The Jersey's are not cheap and they are the ones I really want to raise and breed into the Reds I have to get a very good multi-purpose bird. The reds for their egg production, the Jersey's for broodiness, weight and the fact they are a good winter layer. If it goes well I will be very happy.

On another note I think I am through with school fundraisers... this last one my girls had was a nightmare. First it took a long time for the items to come in, then it was missing one item. I find out from the school that a lot of the items were missing so they re-ordered the item we were missing. It came in yesterday and I was shocked.. Now it was chocolate covered raisins. What my daughter came home with was yes chocolate covered raisins, but they were in a plastic zip lock bag! ...who in their right minds would think my neighbor would be willing to accept that????? Well I told my neighbor about what happened and she said she'll look at them so I sent my daughter down to my neighbor's house with it.

About a half hour after my daughter got back and, no my neighbor wasn't going to take it(I can't blame her). My neighbor calls me and asks me, "do you expect me to believe that those candies came to you in that bag????" Then on top of that she says, "are you sure that the kids or dogs didn't eat my candies when they first came in? Well, I'm calling the school and if I find out you are lieing to me you own me $10."

Well, I told her to go right on ahead and call the damn school because that is what happened; I have a hard time believing that myself but it's what happened. I am afraid that this will be the "final straw" in dealing with this neighbor. We had considered them friends but due to this hassle with this fundraiser and the issues over the dogs I just can't deal with them any more.

Anyone know of an old usable bathtub near me so I can give these people their's back???? *sighs*

Hope your weekend is a good one!

Be Well and Blessed Be.....

Food Channel Season 2

Yep! more chickens! This time around I have 6 Black Jersey Giants, 4 Rhode Island Reds(maybe), and 2 that may be more Jersey's. I am very glad that we had ordered the Jersey's as when we picked them up yesterday they didn't have any extra for buying just in their "shop".

Here is one of my little Jersey's:

Isn't it cute? I ordered 5 pullets and 1 cockerel and I am hoping to increase them next year as well as my Rhode Islands, I also hope they cross well. I'd love to have the Red's production with the Jersey's size.

Oh and while on the subject of yesterday... THANK YOU JON !!!!!!!! and just because I luv ya here is a shameless plug for your blog hon.

http://origannawoods.blogspot.com/

Jon gave us a lift to the hatchery yesterday as with our non-toy tire being flat about 90% of the time we were not sure it would have taken us there and home. I do hope we can all take our other neighbor's near him to the discount grocery store tomorrow as Jon could use the directions of how to get there as well.

In other news I got word from Ozarkland.com (shameless plug again), that yes I can make payments on my current month payment so we can get car parts get out power bill paid and our building bill paid too! So... THANK YOU OZARKLAND!!!!!!

..and while I'm tossing out shameless plugs... here is one for the hatchery:

http://www.cacklehatchery.com/

Wonderful place you can either have your chicks mailed or if you live nearby order then pick up when ready.

Sometime in the near future I may be giving a shameless plug to a facebook friend who just signed a contract on a book! Hey Denise send me a copy so I can post about it here!!!!

I am hoping to get some seeds in the ground by this weekend... if the temps can stay above 38 over night... I mean WOW from what I have learned in the last year of being here, that isn't all that normal. Seems my purple smudge tomatoes don't like the temperature changes and are wilting while other ones are fine... so I don't know what is up there.

Be Well all and Blessed Be...

Hindsight

Love that word.. especially when you have to sit there and say.. "I/we shouldn't have..." and fill in the blank. Well right now mine is on us spending any money aside for .. tire, well, clothes washing, gasoline. As is the fun part about your income coming from disability checks is learning exactly how much you actually have after the payment goes through. Silver has a student loan that gets taken out of his federal check, so we always have to wonder what amount we will actually have when that gets removed. His VA one gets his medications taken out.. and well... he kinda needs those meds being a diabetic with an inactive thyroid.

So now I sit here waiting to call the land company and ask if I can break up the payment I should have made on the 17th of last month.. but due to when we get money have to pay on the 3rd of the following one. If they won't something else won't get paid. However that is the way life is sometimes as I also am sitting here trying to find a way to drive to make the payment, as one of the standard tires is now totally flat on us.

I also know that some people are out there probably wondering why I'm not working a job... well #1 GAS (to get anywhere that has work I need gas money and right now at almost $4 a gallon we can't afford it)

#2 distance to work (aside from the little town we live outside of that has no jobs open takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to drive to a place with work)

So there is my little piece on the "why's" of me not working... as I kinda needed a reminder as I sit here and complain to myself over not having a job to help out. Sometimes it's just very frustrating to me about balancing our payments, and I need an outlet; so please don't be offended by this post.

But hey, the up side to the money problems I'm having might make a good homesteading book some day if I can get something worked out about it. ..and find a publisher willing to take it too.

Hope your day is better than mine.

Be well and Blessed Be...

What a weekend!

It was a loooooong weekend starting back on Friday, Silver got his first check and we went out and bought supplies for building our chicken coop and did some laundry as well. So I got to sit and complain in my head about how stupid some people are while at the laundromat. First when I had to run into the washroom next door I had to wait about 20 minutes for one person to get out... come on folks... this isn't your home and only one washroom at a busy gas station.. 20 minutes is a tad ridiculous. Second stupid moment an older woman came into the laundromat as we were unloading our last washer and after she put her item(s) in the washer she slams the door on the washer a few times till she notices the sign that shows how to close it. then comments how she just never goes to these places, which I think was fairly obvious... oh well.

After loading the car up with everything and heading home we get about 8 miles from home and I hear a funny noise... our "toy tire" blew out. Fun times... so we spent 20 minutes finding someone whom we could use their phone and call for help. Had one of our neighbors come and pick us up and take us to the junk yard and got a replacement "toy tire" for $20 brand new! they also have a set of 4 rims for our car type that are a larger tire as we have 14inch rims and seems no one other than Wal-Mart seems to carry 14 inch tires.. fun... the rims will cost us $80 for all 4.

My son spent the whole weekend at a friend's house, I do hope he had fun I won't find out till tonight when he gets home from school. Anyway we get home and unload hang our laundry and Silver notices there is a funny noise coming from our well... one of the fittings cracked, so he runs over to the MFA to see if they had the part. Of course... they didn't so we had to wait for the girls to get home, shut the well down and went to Lowes.

Now on the way we decided to check and see if some friends of ours from Kansas had arrived yet (they were moving to a place near Mark Cheneil from "Missouri Journal"). We pull into the entrance for their road and .. had to stop. Their shed that they were going to live in was parked in the middle of the road and they were trying to clear enough space to get it up the road. We stayed a bit and chatted then headed over to Lowes to buy well parts.

Now we bought a brass fitting this time so we hopefully will have no more cracking issues. In this case saving $6 wasn't going to save us anything. We stopped by our friend's place on the way home and they had gotten it moved into place by then and we were asked if we could come by Saturday and give them a hand emptying their truck. No problem for us.

So Saturday we spent the morning.. 4 hours of it anyway, building a chicken yard. Notice I did not say coop? WEll as it took 4 hours to do the yard .. we just weren't up to doing the coop yet. However, THE BIRDS ARE OUTSIDE!!!!!!! Yeah no more chicken invasion.. at least until tomorrow, though I do have to check on that and (crosses fingers) hope our normal tire can make the drive to town to get the 6 chickens we ordered from the hatchery.

That evening we helped our Kansas friends unload as much as we could from their moving truck for them, then I offered to make them a nice hot dinner on Sunday. They defiantly were up to driving over for that!

So on sunday I spent the better part of the day cleaning house and cooking/baking. I made my "Yankee Pot Roast Stew":

1 whole eye of round roast

1 large onion

1 lb of bacon

about 8 good sized potatoes diced (dried diced works wonderful)

3-4 carrots

1/2 C bulgar wheat

1/2 C barley

rosemary

thyme

tarragon

basil

chives

6 cloves garlic minced (powder is fine)

curry powder

salt pepper

4 C beef stock (if store bought 2 T beef base as well)

Dice bacon and onion put into warmed dutch oven and cook till bacon is 1/2 cooked and onions are starting to brown; add some olive oil if it gets a bit dry. Then add beef stock and place roast in, adding the herbs and salt/pepper as you prefer the amounts (add minced garlic with the onions powder with herbs), also note any fresh herbs need to go in with the onions; add water if liquid level is not at an inch below the top. cover and let cook at medium until boils then simmer it for 2 hours. After the 2 hours take roast out and cut into bite sized pieces. Return the meat to the liquid and add potatoes, barley, and wheat. Let cook till ready to eat at a simmer (I let it go 4-6 hours more), adding carrots about 30 minutes before it's done; also if you need to thicken it instant potatoes, a rue, or cornstarch works great!

This is best eaten with a spoon and fork!

I was going to bake my "sugar cookie cake"... however it seems due to some unknown reason to me that it exploded in the oven and I know have to clean my oven. I was also going to make bread for this meal... but Saturday night we were so tired I couldn't get to my flour to let it rise overnight. then I made dough Sunday morning.. but the cake mishap happened and now no oven use.

Everyone liked it anyway so it came out alright, now I've got some pictures from this weekend.

These are the chicken coop supplies... except for the 3 bags of concrete that we left in the car to keep dry.

Now this pile is one of my "good buys", when we were still out and I had to stop at my son's school to give him money for the dance on Friday there was a house with a sign out front that said "free stuff". Well all this we got there for free!

1 toilet (only missing the bolts)

1 complete faucet that has enamel handles

1 planting box

1 roll of rolled roofing

1 roll of tar paper

1/2 sheaf of shingles

1 shingling hammer

1 circuit box

1 florescent bulb

a handful of window locks

a few other things that I know I'm forgetting.

Now chicken yard step by step:

After putting the outer fence on, we used wire and zip ties to hold it too the metal posts.

Now, what we did here was to put the chicken wire over the top; and I went around and "sewed" it to the sides with wire. It was tedious but it holds well. We put in some branches to hold up the ceiling. We put in 2 stumps to make some outside roosts on and just put out more branches for those. I'm using a rubber bowl for a waterer right now and a metal pan for their food. We put a tarp across the back to give them shelter from the rain till we build the coop. The tarp will remain after just to give them a "sun shield". Now note... it's only 4ft tall so I get to bend almost halfway to walk around in it.

...and of course, the happy birds in their new home! Funny thing this morning when I was out feeding them and the dogs before the rain hit again... (rain, rain go away...), the "stupid" turkey (one of them anyway) stuck his whole nose into the water bowl and then wound up sneezing for about a minute.

Now here is something I'm putting up that was just interesting... this is a tree that was struck by lightning and cut completely in 1/2.

Cool huh?

I realize some people probably have seen it before.. I haven't and think it looks really interesting. It was a -TALL- tree too!

Here is a close up of the "burn" from it being cut, the burn looks like it went skipping down the whole length of it. Hey maybe we can use this to show kids why they shouldn't get close to trees during a lightning storm.

Well that's it for now hope everyone had a -quiet- weekend!

BE Well and Blessed Be...