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...