Apple Jack Creek

Independence Days update

2010-02-27T13:30:00.001-07:00

It’s been awhile, so here we are with another update on the Independence Days project. :)

Planted: At long last, it is time to start the planting! I have done a lot of work planning and preparing for planting season, and I’ve finally got a few things started. A few tomatoes are in (and sprouted!), the one lonely garlic clove I had that was growing a green tip got put in dirt and it has grown beautifully, several cabbage plants were started in newspaper pots and just yesterday I noticed one had come up. There’s also a couple of Italian sweet peppers poking heads above the soil, and the catnip and lemon basil finally sprouted. I also have an experiment with some tea plant seeds (yes, the shrub that black and green tea grows on): they can be grown as house plants here, so I’m giving that a try. Oh, there are also apple seeds in dirt in the freezer, stratifying.

Harvested: Eggs! Finally, we have eggs again. That is all for harvesting, unless you count the 1 cm leaf of garlic greens that fell off the plant and I nibbled. (It is delicious!)

Preserved: Nothing at present to preserve. Oh, I did dry some orange peel for Gram when we had a pile of oranges on the counter awhile back. That counts.

Waste Not: The dried greens from last summer have been brought inside and we’re feeding them to the bunnies, and crumbling some for the chickens as well. Leftovers are being fed to humans or animals, as usual, nothing particularly exciting on this front.

Want Not (Preparations): We have eggs in the incubator preparing to hatch (it’s always good to be able to ‘grown your own’ of anything!), and I think the documentation I’ve been doing for the garden journal probably falls in this category as well (having the information you need in analog form is a good idea in case of extended internet outage, for instance).

Community Food Systems: The Boy worked at the WECAN food distribution centre last month, and is volunteering again next month. While he was there, he told some of the other volunteers about our meat and had some potentially interested customers. :) We continue to have interest in lamb meat sales, and are finally able to sell eggs again.

Eat the Food: Eggs, of course, we managed to get through the ‘egg strike’ without purchasing store eggs at all. I have realized that next fall I need to freeze a few eggs to get through the dark days of winter, as I really don’t want to have to buy store eggs at all! We’ve been using up our squash (which has stored beautifully) in soup, we made salad from our WECAN food basket lettuce and carrots, and a pureed vegetable soup from potatoes, carrots and celery (also from the WECAN purchase). Gram’s cranberry-crabapple jelly is a standard feature of my oatmeal breakfasts (a spoonful of jelly added to quick oats and hot water is a great way to start the day).

Counting chickens before they hatch

2010-02-20T21:37:00.001-07:00

Well, we aren’t actually counting the chickens … just candling eggs to make sure the ones in the incubator are viable – having rotten eggs explode at 100 degrees Fahrenheit is really, really smelly.

The Reluctant Farmer received a Hovabator for his birthday, and we gathered up some eggs to put in for a ‘first run test’, now that the hens are once again laying eggs. The eggs have been in the incubator for a week now, and the Hovabator is wonderfully stable – it’s much easier to keep the temperature right at 100 F than it was in the home made Eggabator (although it did work, to TRF’s credit), and the mesh wire floor over the water reservoir is easy to work with. We did run a piece of tubing through one of the holes in the lid so that we can fill the water reservoir through the tube, rather than opening the lid, as it takes a while to warm back up once you take the lid off. We also roll the eggs around by tilting the entire incubator gently, rather than precisely turning each egg by hand. Yes, we risk a few cracks, but so far, it’s working. (I’m quite certain the automatic egg turner add-on is on The Reluctant Farmer’s wish list for future gift-giving occasions.)

Today the eggs have been incubating for a week, so I got out the flashlight (cowled with a rubber band for a better seal against the egg), found a dark corner, and checked the eggs. About half were duds, which wasn’t really a surprise – we used some eggs that had been stored in the fridge, which usually bodes ill for hatching, and we only have 2 roosters right now for quite a lot of hens.

However, candling showed quite clearly the eggs that were empty, one that was filled with some really unpleasant looking splotches (that one takes my vote for “most likely to erupt in a sulfurous mess”, so I’m glad to have found it), and one with the telltale red ring indicating an infection in the chick (something I didn’t know about until I read this wonderful posting). The coolest thing, though, was seeing the little unhatched chicks moving around on their own inside the eggs! I had no idea they did that – although it makes perfect sense. It’s neat to watch.

So, we have 7 eggs with confirmed chicks inside, and 2 more that were too hard to see, so we left them in and will check again later.

A garden journal

2010-02-16T21:59:00.001-07:00

I love my piles of gardening books. I have a wide variety of references, and I mix and match strategies to suit what I’m growing and where. Given our steady supply of composted manure and ready access to waste straw, hay and wool for mulch, we are fortunate to have the full set of gardening strategies available to us – we aren’t reliant on chemical fertilizers to keep our garden beds in good shape, we just add manure every year, and we have plenty of it. It’s taken quite awhile to get the entire garden area ready to come under cultivation, but I think, finally, this year we are there.

I use Mel Bartholemew’s Square Foot Gardening for most of my root vegetables, and I do love planting my carrots and beets in little squares inside the big one foot squares marked off by yarn in my wood-sided raised beds. However, I also follow the advice of Steve Solomon’s Gardening When it Counts, which is pretty much the antithesis of the intensive strategies of the square foot method, for other things. Solomon’s strategies work really well for larger plants like potatoes, corn, and tomatoes, and this year I’ll be attempting the wide short row strategy he recommends for some of my other plants. I also hope to incorporate some of the season extension strategies described by Eliot Coleman in the Four Season Harvest, a lovely gift from Theresa at Pondering the Myriad Things. In addition to these major resources are the books on the medicinal uses of herbs, books on natural plant dyes, and assorted general garden reference books.

Trying to find the information I need among all these amazing resources can be a real challenge sometimes, so I decided to create my very own garden journal, combining all the key points I needed in one spot.

I sat down at the kitchen table with my piles of books and a new, untouched journal (a gift from my wonderful husband a few years back, which I’d been saving for something special: this is it). I also dug up a calendar (this one is the STARS fundraising calendar – The Reluctant Farmer has helped load people into the STARS rescue helicopter more than once in his role as volunteer firefighter), and my stash of seeds.

First, let’s talk about the seed stash. Normally, the seeds live in a lovely binder that The Boy got me from Lee Valley (where else?) that protects the seeds from moisture and keeps them nicely organized. However, come planting time, I need them out where I can quickly rifle through them to get to the ones I am after – so, I took a regular cardboard box, chopped off the lid flaps, and sliced them so that they fit into one another to divide the interior into seed-packet-sized sections. The seeds are sorted into the sections based on when I need to deal with them – the ones that are going to need stratification and indoor starting are in the first sections, those that need to go out early (as soon as the soil can be worked) are up next, and the sensitive ones that need the frost well behind us are at the very back.

This also got me started on the journal itself.

Each plant is listed at the top of a page, which is cross-referenced on a table of contents at the beginning. The herbs are all at the beginning of the journal, vegetables and fruit plants are at the back. All plants have information about where and how they need to be planted, if they need stratification and indoor starting or if they go straight outside, what kind of watering requirements they have, how much sun they want, and so forth. Then, herbs have additional information about their medicinal properties and which parts are harvested, and any plant that is useful as a dye plant has the colours and any instructions for use listed as well. The information is gathered from all the relevant sources – so, if this is a plant I put in square foot blocks, I wrote down the density per block, if it’s one that I plan to follow Solomon’s spacing guidelines, I wrote those in. I make a note in the margin to indicate which book the information came from, so I can go there for more detail if I wish.

The journal still isn’t quite complete, but I have basic information for just about every seed I have in the collection, plus the few I have still coming on order. As time passes, I can update it with specifics about what works well here, in our specific microclimate, which is why it is called the Apple Jack Creek Garden Journal. It’s specific to here. There’s no need for me to write down that carrots can be stored in the ground over the winter if you mulch well with straw … that is true in some places, I am sure, but not here, not by a long shot (even under a layer of straw, the ground is quite thoroughly frozen all winter: you’d be chipping out frozen carrots with a pick-axe if you tried that here). Most of the information about “a second planting for a fall harvest” is not relevant either – our growing season is too short. however, that might change, with climate change and season extension, so I’ll leave some blank space and add to the book as I learn.

The calendar is the piece that is most specific to this year’s plans. The ‘official last frost date’ is marked, as is the date we actually had our last frost last year (which I know because I wrote it on my garden calendar from last year, and it was a whole month after we thought we were in the clear … not a good spring, 2009). Using those dates (and the dates of the full and new moon) I work backwards to figure out when things need to be started indoors, or when we should be planting things outside. Family tradition says you don’t plant outside until the first full moon after the May long weekend, and this year, for the tender plants, I’m extending the target to the first new moon after the first full moon in May – we’ll see how that goes, and if it works, it may be incorporated into the family lore.

As each seed is documented and it’s needs are determined, that information goes onto the calendar. Several of the herbs, for instance, require stratification, some for six weeks, some for four, some for one or two. The calendar makes it easy to determine when I want to have “seed starting day for herbs” – knowing that they take about 2 weeks to poke their heads out of the dirt and need a few weeks indoors to grow and turn into actual plants before being set outside. Given a starting date for seeds, it’s a simple matter to work backwards to list which varieties need to go into the freezer when. I wrote that detail on the seed packets, too, for those that didn’t mention it, as well as making sure it’s in the journal.

The calendar is the best way to track what really happened, which will, of course, help for next year. For instance, I remember that last year that late frost killed a whole lot of things I’d put out too early (all my tomatoes, for instance) although I wasn’t careful about documenting when each thing was planted, and I want to do that this year. I also remember that I had too many seedlings indoors for too long – I started them too early, and they outgrew their little pots before I could get them in the ground – so this year, I’m trying to time things a little better. I do still have the ‘optimistic planting’ dates marked – hey, you can put a few seeds in early, and if they grow, well, awesome, and if not, well, not a huge loss. Same for the started plants – I finally put a few tomato seedlings in dirt yesterday, because I just couldn’t stand the wait any longer, but the bulk of the tomato plants won’t be started for several more weeks.

Planning the garden is a great thing to do in late winter – it makes you feel like spring really is coming, and it saves a lot of headache later on if you take the time to do the research before hand (I now know why a bunch of my herbs didn’t do anything last year – that whole stratification thing matters!)

Maybe a garden journal is just what you need, too.

Pizza from the pantry

2010-02-15T19:39:00.001-07:00

We couldn’t quite decide what to have for dinner tonight, but we all wanted something easy, simple, and familiar. Pizza fit the criteria.

Okay, the next question was whether or not we had the ingredients:

Mozza – yup, in the fridge. Pizza sauce – yup, leftover spaghetti sauce and leftover tomato paste mixed together would do. Mushrooms – yup, canned, in the pantry. Green and red peppers – yup, dehydrated, also in the pantry. Just soak in water while the dough rises, and they’re good to go. Sausage – yup, in the freezer. Pizza dough – easy.

Wait – pizza dough is easy? You bet.

I use the breadmaker all the time to mix up bread dough – I can do it by hand, but I like using the machine when I’m busy doing other things, which is always. All you need to do is make regular bread dough, with a more generous-than-usual shot of olive oil, and add some spices. Our bread recipe looks like this:

1 cup of water
3 cups of flour
a shot of sugar
a few sprinkles of salt
half a lidful of yeast (trial and error has shown this to be the correct measurement – and using the lid from the yeast jar to measure with is terrifically convenient)
a generous shot of olive oil (round and round the breadmaker container about 3 or 4 times)

That’s it. Put it on the dough setting and let it do it’s thing. If you forget it in there (yeah, it happens) and it’s too puffy when you finally do remember, just restart the dough cycle and let the machine knead it just a wee bit more before you take it out.

For pizza dough, we added Greek seasoning, garlic powder and oregano.

Once the dough cycle is done, take the ball of dough out and cut it in half. Use the rolling pin to shape the dough to fit your pan (we use a rectangular pan, so we make rectangular pizza), top with tomato sauce and your toppings. Shape the remaining half into bread sticks and pop the two pans into the oven at 500 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Voila – dinner!

Okay, THAT was a surprise!

2010-02-11T20:35:00.001-07:00

I got a message on MSN this morning from The Boy.

Mom?

Yes..

Ewen (the calf) is in with the sheep, and the wether is in with the cow, and Jaws has a lamb.

A lamb???

We didn’t even think Jaws was pregnant, never mind due!

As for the rest, well, Ewen does jump the fence to visit the sheep sometimes. We get him out of there, so that nobody gets hurt, but he was not fussing and he jumped back into his own pasture as soon as The Boy went outside. The wether was encouraged to return where he belonged, and once outside, The Boy discovered that Jaws not only had one lamb, she had twin boys!

He got them into the barn, fed their mama, got her some water, and trimmed up her (really awful) shearing job so that the lambs could locate their milk. I called to see how things were going and heard “Mom, this sheep has no udder. I can’t even FIND it!” Jaws does have a rather oddly shaped udder, the teats are farther to the side than on most sheep, so he had a bit of work to get the wool tags cleared out so that he (and the lambs) could find the business end of things, but all is well and the babies are happy and nursing well. He’s calling them Fred and Frank (this is an F year at our house – I know, we’re not in line with the ‘official naming alphabet’, but it works for us.)

I was met by a grinning Boy when I got home. “We have three lambs now!” Who else? Cherub, of course! The only 2 non-seasonal breeders we have here both had their lambs today, thankfully a very warm and reasonably dry February day (for Alberta, anyhow) and my amazing kid just calmly took care of all the details and got everyone where they needed to be. Cherub wasn’t doing a good job of cleaning off her lamb, so he handed the lamb to Bob the dog who took care of that task. Bob is now snoozing in the barn, just outside the pens where the sheep are. Bob loves lambing season.

Sheep are great.

We *should* have peace and quiet on the lambing front until Easter now – the Icelandics are strongly seasonal breeders and lamb much later in the spring, and based on what we saw in the pasture last fall, we are expecting more surprises nearer to April.

Then again, sheep like to surprise you, so I guess we’ll just keep checking out the window and see what happens!

Life’s too short to spin nasty wool

2010-02-07T15:20:00.001-07:00

I am ruthlessly sorting the wool in the fibre room.

Good bits are pulled off for washing, yukky bits are sent to the compost pile with no regrets. I used to try to wring every bit into something functional, but you know what? There’s plenty more wool where this stuff came from, and if I’m gonna spin, I’m gonna enjoy it.

It’d be different if I paid for the stuff, if there was a limited supply of fibre, or if every bit of wool was destined to clothe my family or something. However, given that none of those are true … only the best stuff gets to stay. Everything else goes outside!

Washing Fleece

2010-02-06T12:38:00.001-07:00

I recently got Alden Amos’ Big Book of Handspinning from the library: it has great writing style, lots of information, and I am most definitely inspired.

See, it has finally occurred to me that I can store fleeces after they are washed, but not necessarily carded. Don’t ask me why this never made it into my thoughts before – I mean, there’s certainly no reason you have to card the stuff immediately after it dries, but I always thought of the two tasks being done together and if I wasn’t ready to do the whole job, I just didn’t do any of it. The result is that I have piles of dirty fleeces sitting in my fibre room, when it would be ever so much better to have piles of washed fleeces sitting in my fibre room.

The Big Book of Handspinning book actually recommends storing fleece in fabric bags hung from the ceiling, wrapped tightly at the top to keep bugs out and labeled with a tag – I’m thinking pillowcases from the thrift store would work perfectly. I’m really liking that idea, as it improves the accessibility of the fibre and keeps things up off the floor. I suspect a trip to the thrift store is in order, to acquire more pillow cases. :)

Now, I don’t wash Icelandic fleece. I tried to, really I did, but I ended up with lumpy piles of felt every single time. There is so little lanolin in it anyway that it’s really not difficult to work with in the unwashed state. I like to prepare it for spinning with combs, rather than carders, and since combs aren’t bothered by lanolin the way carders are, I have no reason to struggle with the esoteric art of washing Icelandic fleece. Also, since we don’t use pour-on medications for the sheep, I know that the worst of what’s in their wool is at least non-toxic, although it is definitely dirty and germ-laden. I can deal with dirt and germs: I do live on a farm, after all.

However …

I have piles of non-Icelandic fleeces here. They have been sitting for awhile and if that goes on too much longer, the lanolin in them is going to turn into solid guck, which will make them even worse to clean when I finally get around to it. So, inspired by the book, I have started sorting and washing the fleece. It isn’t a complicated process: just put very hot water in buckets with some washing soda and dish detergent (the book recommends natural soap, but we have very hard water, so detergent is a better choice for us), add the fleece without agitating it at all, let it soak in the soapy water for a bit, then get it out without scalding your hands or squishing the wool (scooping it with a colander works fairly well). Let the worst of the wash water drain off, then gently transfer to a clean bucket of equally hot water, and let it soak there for a bit. Scoop it out again, then lay it out to dry. I have wool spread out on the older (somewhat rickety) drying rack, with fabric spread across the racks to keep the wool bits from falling through. It’ll dry in the next couple of days, and humidify the house nicely at the same time. :)

I think I’ll go see if I can find room to spread out one more fleece … I’ve got lots to do, and I might as well do it while the humidity is low and I’m in the zone!

Farewell Duggan

2010-02-02T21:00:00.001-07:00

I got an email today from Duggan’s new family … his kidneys finally failed, and they made the hard decision to let him go to sleep for the last time.

He had a good life, really, and a fairly long one for a beagle – he was ten years old. He came to live with us when The Boy was just in kindergarten, and Duggan was a year old then … he was a good companion when you needed a friend who loved you no matter what. He wasn’t really sure about the whole farm life thing – but after awhile, he got used to being here and spent his days snoozing in the sun with the cats curled up next to him (The Reluctant Farmer used to make fun of him for consorting with cats, no self-respecting dog would do that!). One day, he answered a call only he could hear, and wandered off west where he found Miss Ruby, who needed him so badly. After Miss Ruby’s passing, he found his retirement home where he was cared for and loved through his last illness, and today, our kind and gentle vet helped him into his final rest.

I miss his soft ears, and his happy wagging tail. He was a good dog, and I’m sure he has found Miss Ruby in heaven. No doubt she’s happy to see him.

Planning the garden

2010-02-01T21:21:00.001-07:00

Oh my, I have a lot of seeds. And I’ve ordered more. And I don’t think my garden is quite big enough. :)

This is a good problem to have, really.

The past two years have seen the garden space slowly expanding … well, the fences haven’t moved, but the area within the fences has been gradually brought into shape for planting. The original two 16x4 foot raised beds are still there and serving well, and the strawberry bed that was added last year will hopefully start producing this summer. This past fall, the sheep were sent in to eat down the remaining grass (which grew to knee height over the summer), so with luck, the almost indestructible pasture grasses will finally be in a state that they can be controlled.

This spring, more compost will be hauled in, rows for planting peas and corn and beans and tomatoes will be marked out and piled high with fresh soil, and walkways will be mulched with straw. Three new herb beds will be laid out (maybe with wooden borders, maybe with rocks, maybe just with marked off boundaries), and a grape arbour will be constructed (yes, I found a grape that is supposed to be cold hardy … I just had to try it!). There is a spot set aside for the new raspberry bushes, and squash plants will be put in all around the border. Peas will be planted with sunflowers so that their supports grow along side the vines, and if I get really organized, some flowers might even get planted out by the driveway. The garden calendar has all the dates for putting seeds that need stratification into the freezer, when to start the various indoor seedlings, when the last frost date is supposed to be (and when it actually was last year, which was a whole month later than the schedule called for!), and a variety of possible planting dates, all, of course, subject to the weather.

It’s good to think about gardens when winter starts to get really long. It makes spring seem closer. :)

The Food Mill: a truly awesome kitchen gadget

2010-01-26T21:16:00.001-07:00

For Christmas, my parents gifted me with a new food mill.

This is a truly awesome kitchen gadget!

Applesauce: Cook up a bunch of apples (just slice them, don’t bother peeling or coring) with a wee bit of water and a shot of cinnamon, then when they are soft, put them into the bowl of the food mill, crank the handle, and voila – you have smooth, seedless, peel-free apple sauce in the dish underneath.

Cream of vegetable soup: Cook up your vegetables until they are nice and soft – or take the leftovers from last night’s dinner. Fry up some onions in a generous helping of butter, add a bit of garlic or spices if you like, and when the onions are nice and golden, thicken the butter with flour and stir it to cook a little. Pour in some milk, heat it through, then dump the cooked veggies and their cooking liquid, into the mix. Ladle into the food mill and puree into the serving dish. Serve with grated cheese to sprinkle into the bowl … just beware of dangling cheesy bits!

Lentil soup: Heat your oil, then add onions and stir while they turn golden. Add curry and spices (the spices need to be absorbed by the oil, the flavour is much richer than if they are just added to the liquid), some chopped or mashed leftover potatoes, and maybe some diced or leftover carrots (or whatever other veggies are kicking around – peas would be good), then add your rinsed lentils and 4 times their volume in broth (or plain water with a generous shot of dried, blendered greens for flavouring). Cook until the lentils fall apart, potatoes are cooked through (if they weren’t already), then ladle into the food mill and puree into the serving dish.

I’ve used the food mill three times in the last few days. It’s great! I can’t wait for tomato paste season. :) Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Independence Days: January 2010

2010-01-26T20:14:00.001-07:00

It’s about time we did another Independence Days update, I think. Having just obtained my very own copy of Sharon Astyk’s book of the same name, I am officially inspired. :)

So, although it seems like one would not do much in the way of ‘preparing’ in the winter, let’s see what’s been going on.

Planted: Okay, planting is out of the question – although, I am considering planting some catnip in a pot. Not for the cats, for me: I often have trouble sleeping and catnip is an amazingly effective sedative, and it tastes good as a tea! Yeah, I know: it makes cats all goofy and wound up, and it puts people to sleep. Now you know why you can’t assume veterinary medicine is the same as the stuff for people.

Harvested: Well, not much. In fact, we had the Annual Winter Egg Drought over the holiday season, of course, in the dark time of the year. The hens were all recovering from moult, it was cold, it was dark, nobody was laying eggs. Then … on Saturday … the Egg Miracle occurred. An egg! Finally! And another the next day, and one more the next, and three this morning! You have no idea how happy this makes me. I love fresh eggs.

Preserved: Now this, I have done! I found a bag of red, yellow and green peppers on sale at the grocery store, so I bought them, used some fresh, and then dehydrated the rest. We use the dehydrated peppers in our soups and stews to add a bit of colour and sweetness – and now that the kids have finally realized that just because it is called a pepper it doesn’t necessarily mean it is hot, we can use them in everything. I also grated some orange rind from the lovely oranges that came in the monthly food basket from WECAN, and put that in the dehydrator too, for my mom. She asked for some at Christmas time.

Waste Not: The aforementioned dehydrating probably counts, as does the ongoing creative use of leftovers. We had a few potatoes and carrots left from dinner, and I was making lentil soup … which needs to be thickened with potatoes, so in they went, along with the carrots. Being flexible with recipes is a great way to avoid waste.

Want Not (Preparations): The trip to the Thrift Store turned up some fun yarn for projects, as well as a $2.50 teapot that has a base to hold a tealight. I have tested it out and you can actually heat water to the right temperature to make a decent pot of tea, just by leaving it on the tealight. It’s slow, but it works. The pot also can sit on the woodstove, which was, in fact, the primary requirement for this new purchase.

Community Food Systems: Ordered more hay from my local hay farmer, and sold more lamb to some local customers.

Eat the Food: The food basket this month contained a head of cauliflower (as well as a head of broccoli, some potatoes, and assorted other things). My More with Less cookbook had a recipe for an easy cream of cauliflower soup, and it turned out fabulous. (Stay tuned for more on that.)

Peace and Quiet for the New Year

2009-12-31T21:49:00.001-07:00

I love peace and quiet.

I suppose that too much of it would get boring, but I can’t actually think of any set of circumstances in my life so far where that’s occurred, so I cherish peace and quiet when it shows up.

Early winter is always a good time to indulge in a little bit of restful quiet at home: sitting by the fire, reading, knitting, spinning, puttering about looking through boxes of stuff, reorganizing the book case. Things outside are in a routine – the entertaining antics of breeding season are past, lambing won’t happen until April, calving won’t be until late summer, and the chickens are on strike and not even laying one measly egg a day. Whatever outside work didn’t get done in the fall has to wait for spring, and since The Reluctant Farmer is in school, larger scale inside projects are on hold, too.

That means peace and quiet. :)

Ten years ago, I was part of the preparations for Y2K – I know there was a lot of hype and panic, but there really were things that could’ve gone wrong, and through the efforts of a lot of coders, testers, technicians and journeymen, trouble was, by and large, avoided. Oh, the whole world infrastructure was never at risk of collapse, but power plants could’ve stopped, phone systems gone nutty, and billing systems gone even nuttier … and it was worth it to put the effort in up front in order to avoid the potential problems.

I remember having a copy of one of the magazines popular among the survivalist types back then: I kept it in my office for entertainment purposes during some of the late-night work we had to do. The part that always made me laugh out loud was the big story about how to build your own bunker. That wasn’t the funny part: the funny part was the advertisement on the facing page for a years’ worth of food for six people, in which the primary meal was beans. Just imagine: six people squashed into an underground bunker eating beans … this is not gonna be a pleasant place to be in a few hours! I always figured those kinds of ‘eat for a year’ parcels ought include and annual supply of Beano and Gas-X, just on humanitarian grounds.

Ten years ago at the turn of the new century, I lived in a nice house in town, with a gas fireplace and electric heat, went grocery shopping every week, and didn’t really give it all much thought - even with all the hype and hoopla of Y2K. Now I live in the country in a not-quite-finished house … but one with enough power from solar to keep the water running and the dark at bay if the power goes out, a woodstove for heat and cooking if the natural gas goes out (or for when prices spike by 40% as they are scheduled to do next month), and a reasonably full pantry (nowhere near where I’d like it to be, but we are set up to weather a week of being snowed in with no real problems, at least).

Looking back on my 'old life’, I can’t imagine how I was ever comfortable being so reliant on “things being the way they are supposed to be”. Of course the store shelves would be full next week (but a forest fire that blocked the roads was all it took to make that untrue) … of course there would be heat all winter (but the furnace quit one very cold night and only the gas fireplace and the furnace repair man’s quick response time kept the house from freezing) … of course we’d always have enough money to buy whatever we needed (but a brain tumor took over my first husband’s mind and body, and suddenly everything fell apart, and there was no money, no house, no nothing).

Things can change, for any number of reasons, there is no ‘sure thing’. Oh, I don’t need to be prepared for every situation, I don’t even believe it’s possible. I tell people quite honestly that I gave up “planning” when my life fell apart way back when. I don’t believe in plans anymore. I believe in preparation, and it’s different. Plans are built on a set of assumptions about what is going to happen and how you’ll respond to the changes you predicted. Preparation is about having options and flexibility to meet whatever the Universe decides to throw at you.

Even with preparation, the Universe can still wing a fastball at you that you can’t hit, I know that. But boy, oh boy, is it a good feeling to know that you’ve at least managed to slightly increase your chance of having the bat meet the ball.

I think it’s time to start shopping for a second woodstove… :)

Bounty from the food cooperative

2009-12-18T19:35:00.001-07:00

Today I picked up my first produce order from the local food purchasing cooperative. For only $8 we received:

5 onions
3 giant potatoes
5 big carrots (one 2 lb bag)
6 green apples
5 bananas
1 cantaloupe

All that for less than the cost of two Starbucks lattes. There was so much there I couldn’t quite fit everything into my shopping bag!

This is great. It’s convenient and it’s cost effective: I just stop by the pickup point (right near my office) to pick up my box of food, drop off $8 for next month’s order, and I’m done!

The cooperatives do appreciate volunteer help with pickup and packaging, but with this one, at least, it’s not mandatory (The Boy will probably go and spend a day now and then helping with the weighing and packaging). Even without my time, though, my membership increases the cooperative’s bulk buying power and so my contribution of dollars also helps everyone else.

If you have a food cooperative like this in your area, please consider joining, even – or maybe especially - if you can afford store prices on your groceries. The more people who participate, the better it works: and there are a lot of people who could use a discount on their grocery bill.

A wonderful thing happened to me today!

2009-11-28T18:59:00.001-07:00

For my birthday, my awesome husband gave me a $20 gift certificate for the local yarn store. Today I finally had a chance to go in there and wander around: I knew I could find something to spend my money on ... some new circulars for a project I want to do from Knitty (a lovely cowl called Ice Queen – last week at the thrift store I found this amazing cotton/acrylic/mohair yarn that'll be perfect for this), more row counters (always need those), and some lovely purple merino silk blend rovings to spin up.

As I was standing there pondering knitting notions, I heard a conversation between the shopkeeper and a lady. The lady said "oh, and I have this Ashford wheel ... I've had it for 15 years figuring I'd learn to spin, but I haven't, and I figure it's time to sell it. Could I sell it here, maybe?"

Well, you can bet your boots I spoke up right then!

"A wheel?? Did you say you have a wheel for sale?"

I explained I've got my PVC Babe wheel, but have been coveting a wooden one for awhile. However, I've only got a bit of money to spend so I was looking for a used one.

"Well, how much have you got?"

I told her I had $150, totally figuring that'd be way too low.

Her eyes got big - it was more than she thought she'd get for it, clearly!

The shopkeeper and I asked her some questions to figure out which model of Ashford it was, and in the end we weren't quite sure, but it was either the Traditional or the Traveller. Even knowing that new these go for $400 or so, she was quite happy to make the deal with me, and I picked it up this afternoon!

And … it *is* the Traveller (single drive) - which is EXACTLY the wheel I wanted! I wanted a castle wheel (I just love 'em, the look, and the space, and ... I dunno, they just suit me. Maybe it's from working on a Babe for so long!) ... she was THRILLED to have it go to someone so excited (I swear I was bouncing in my seat on the way home, this is just the cooooolest thing to have happen!) and the yarn store lady thought it was just awesome that we were both happy! Way cool!

The wheel was bought brand new and never used. It's sat, untouched, for 15 years in a corner, just looking pretty.

A good coat of Old English lemon oil on all the pieces (it'll need another coat or two, the wood's a bit thirsty - we have a very dry climate, so we're quite accustomed to that kind of maintenance), some penetrating oil squirted on the bearings, a new drive band (the original had disappeared somewhere, and a hunk of this ... whatever it is that works really well for weaving warp ... seems to be working great), and it's treadling smoothly!

I'm about to check the instructions on the Ashford site, then get some fibre and try this baby out ... I am sooooo excited!

So if you need something to feel happy about, I have enough happiness to share! Wherever you are, feel free to jump for joy right along with me!

Spaghetti Squash Soup

2009-11-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

Spaghetti squash is an odd sort of vegetable. This sturdy, almost-impossible-to-cut-open yellow squash cooks up to reveal stringy insides that can substitute directly for pasta. It just isn’t at all what you expect when you hold one in your hand.

I bought a spaghetti squash at the grocery store a year or two ago and cooked it up for dinner (as I recall, we had a vegetable pasta sauce thing to go over top of it, and we ate it as though it were actual spaghetti). Everyone liked it, and I saved the seeds and planted them in the garden.

This year, we got quite a few squash from the plants that grew from the saved seeds – and this is not a small thing, given how generally awful our garden season was this summer. The squash are now piled in a cool spot in the house, and I peek in on them every so often to make sure none have gone soft or started to mould. So far, all is well in the squash pile. :)

Today I had a craving for a nice warm soup for supper, and so I took 2 of the larger squash, cut them in half (with a really big knife and some pounding), then set them cut side down in a lasagne pan filled with about an inch of water and baked them until they were soft. (After I started, I read that you can also stab them with a fork, cook them whole, and then slice them after they’ve cooked to a softer state … hadn’t thought of that!)

Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian cookbook has an excellent recipe for pumpkin soup which basically involves sautéing an onion in oil with some ginger, then adding the cooked squash and a chopped potato or two, topping the pot up with vegetable broth and simmering with pepper and a couple of bay leaves until it’s all cooked. Once the potatoes are soft, the soup is run through the blender, then reheated with a bit of milk. The recipe says you can substitute any yellow-fleshed squash for the original pumpkin, and spaghetti squash worked out just fine.

The resulting soup is delicious – very gentle, not overwhelmingly spiced (although there is another variation with curry which I may try on a cold winter day), and nicely comforting with a loaf of home made bread.

I made sure to set the seeds aside to dry out for next year’s garden: any vegetable that keeps this well and cooks up into a meal perfectly suited to chilly winter days is definitely on my to-grow list!

Pea Soup for Supper

2009-11-15T19:56:00.001-07:00

Whole green peas (dehydrated from the garden), about a cup
Yellow split peas, about 3/4 of a cup
Dehydrated red peppers, a small handful
Dehydrated celery, generous pinch
Dehydrated and powdered zucchini, about a tablespoon
Two small onions (from this year’s harvest), chopped
One potato, chopped

Place all ingredients in big pot and cover with water. Season generously with cumin, Watkins soup and vegetable seasoning, and a little bit of coriander. Add a tablespoon of Knorr vegetable boullion powder.

Heat until the peas are fully rehydrated and the potatoes start to fall apart. Let it sit on the wood stove for an hour or so to meld flavours.

Bake a loaf of bread to go with it.

Voila - supper!

Climate Change – the small version

2009-11-11T12:27:00.001-07:00

Every year, we go through rounds of climate change.

Summer is warm, and we need the windows open to get the air circulating through the house. If the upstairs window is open, the cooler air actually gets drawn in the downstairs windows as the rising heat pushes air out of the upstairs window, in a sort of passive ventilation scheme. All that sunshine really heats the house, though, so in the summer we tend to spend more time in the North Wing where the building is shaded and the rooms stay cooler, especially with the heavy dark drapes pulled to block the warming sun.

The rest of the year, though, those big south facing windows are a delight, and we spend more time in the South Wing of the house, soaking up the precious natural light (of which there is less and less as we approach solstice again), and the concomitant warmth.

However, as fall turns to winter, those big panes of glass also have a downside. They bring in sunlight and warmth, but boy, oh boy, do they leak heat. The glass is icy under your fingers, and much of the lovely warmth from inside is transferred outside in accordance with the unbreakable laws of thermodynamics.

So … we deal with the annual face of climate change with our annual climate change mitigation strategies. :)

Today, the bubble wrap insulation went up on all the windows. The light still comes in, and we still get lots of warmth … but the transfer of warm air to the outside is impeded by thousands of tiny plastic bubbles stuck to the glass.

We also need to replace the light weight summer curtains with heavier, chill-blocking ones – but with so many windows, that’s a substantial investment in fabric. I’ve got some thoughts about weaving some curtain fabric from the rather substantial stash of wool I have here … but if I find good curtains on sale before then, well, one way or the other, we’ll get warmer drapes in place before too long.

The last mitigation strategy we need to put in place is the expensive transparent plastic thermal barrier for the upper windows – they are too high to reach without an extension ladder (and even then, the very top is a long way up), and we want a more permanent heat-transfer solution for those windows – something that is ‘once and done’. The see-through stick on thermal barrier material from Home Depot works really well, but we’ll need several rolls to cover those windows. Still, for the savings in heating costs, it’s probably worth it.

I think I’ll schedule a trip this week as part of my small scale climate change mitigation strategy. :)

One way to make a difference in the world

2009-11-08T20:06:00.001-07:00

This is a guest post written by my sister, who lives in Lithuania and works with the local church there.

Shuffling her way through the front door of the hostel where she lives, few people would pay much attention to the elderly woman as she clutches a bag of groceries. In fact, not long ago Renata was one of society’s forgotten; her makeshift home a collection of discarded trash at the garbage dump, and her food scavenged from the filth. Twice a month, however, a van would come carrying loaves of bread, hot tea, and sometimes a candle for lighting the darkness. The van also brought a priceless gift: hope. As the team handed out food and poured tea, they also talked about someone who loves us despite our filth. Through the concern demonstrated by the people in the van, Renata slowly grew to trust that they truly cared for her, and learned that Jesus loved her. When they warned that the dumpsite would be closed and urged people to move into the city to find work, Renata listened. The investment made by the church group who used to take food to the dump has developed into a lifelong friendship, and the chance for a new life. The church supported Renata through the difficult days of transition to life in the city, giving her food when she had nothing, and welcoming her into their church family. Today, Renata does odd jobs like cleaning, and picking mushrooms or berries to make enough money to pay for her place at the hostel. She visits with the people from the van at church on Sundays, and though sometimes she leaves with a bag of groceries in her hand, she always leaves as a friend.

Helping the poor and homeless is often a long process that requires commitment and generous amounts of patience. One church in Klaipeda is working hard to make a difference in the lives of people who are caught in the grip of poverty. A single bag of groceries can be the difference between complete despair, and hope for another day, and the impact of the relationships built can last an eternity.

The work my sister is a part of is just one way of helping. No matter who is doing the work, though, small acts of service and sharing like this *do* make a difference. Please consider making charitable donations a part of your Christmas: it’s the perfect gift for the person who has everything!

If you don’t know where to send your dollars, I can tell you that supporting the work in Lithuania definitely ensures your dollars are well spent: for instance, the local soup kitchen in Klaipeda has a budget of only $200 CDN for the winter – that small amount is enough to see their services through the worst of the cold season, although they could use more, to be sure. A donation of $20 will fill a bag of groceries for a homeless person in Klaipeda, and it’ll be handed to them, no strings attached, by a person who genuinely cares … quite possibly my very own sister, who truly embodies living as God’s hands in the world.

You can read more about my sister’s life and work in Lithuania on her blog, and donations to the food project she is a part of can be made through their missions group, the EFCCM. Just fill in your information on the first page, and on the second, where you can identify the project you wish to donate to, enter “A Step Up, Lithuania: 2-2862GB”.

City Chickens in Windsor, Ontario

2009-11-03T09:29:00.001-07:00

This just in from CBC News!

A new city committee will study the possibility that people in Windsor, Ont., should be allowed to raise chickens in their backyards.

City council decided at a regular meeting Monday night to strike the committee in response to local resident Steve Green's 15-page letter extolling the virtues of urban chickens.

The benefits Green listed in his letter dated Oct. 19 include better food security, increased access to protein and reduced greenhouse gases due to reduced food transportation costs.

Also, Green wrote, "Chickens make great pets."

I sure hope Mr. Green is successful: chickens really are awesome critters, and with nothing more complicated than a chain link dog run, a dog house type shelter and a couple of Rubbermaid-bin nesting boxes, they can be kept quite easily in a city back yard. They’re quieter than dogs, easier to contain than cats (not exactly *easy* to contain, but really, not too bad if you’ve got decent infrastructure), and … they lay eggs in return for their food!

A frequently mentioned concern is that their food will attract mice – but mice like dog and cat food, and nobody complains about that. A garbage bin for feed storage solves the problem nicely, anyway. Then there’s the manure … again, no worse than what dogs and cats leave behind, and in fact, it’s easier to deal with since it can be composted and used on the garden (not something you want to do with pet wastes).

Best wishes to Mr. Green in Windsor … Apple Jack Creek’s rooting for you!

What I did today: an Inuit-inspired needle case

2009-11-02T19:04:00.001-07:00

Today, I embarked on a bit of an experiment. The experiment was designed to solve a recurring problem, namely the fact that I can never seem to find my metal wool needles (the big blunt tipped ones you use for sewing up or weaving in ends). It was also designed to use materials I had on hand.

Inspired by an Inuit needle case design, I worked out a strategy for creating something similar.

First, I needed a hollow bone. I have some from the lamb bones that we got back from the butcher, so I cleaned one thoroughly and filed and sanded the ends so they were smooth, and I soaked it in vinegar to get rid of the smell.

Then I needed two toggles: one that could serve as a loop for a strap, if the case was to be hung somewhere, or perhaps worn on a lanyard, and one to serve as a ‘stopper’ at the bottom. I had a lovely red bead that would be a great stopper, and a small chunk cut from another bone made a loop and stopper all in one.

Last but not least, I needed something to stick the needles through. The Inuit used a strip of hide, but that’s not something I have in ready supply. I do, however, have plenty of wool, so I knit an i-cord double the length of the bone. It’s very narrow at the base, so that it will fit through the hole in the red bead, then widens for the section that will be inside the bone, to give lots of room for poking needles through it. At the top, it narrows again to form the extension that leads up to the round loop/stopper.

The finished needle case, in closed position:

And open, to give access to the needles inside:

Yeah, I know I could buy something to suit the purpose … or I could keep my needles in the drawer (I actually do that, most of the time) … but this was a neat thing to try and I think it’ll be quite handy.

I even have enough materials to make another one, just for fun. :)

Chatelaine of the Household

2009-11-01T21:17:00.001-07:00

Chatelaine was, in ancient times, the title for the mistress of a large household. Her role carried the responsibility for making sure all the stores were in order, everyone had enough clothing, and otherwise managing all the things necessary to keep the household running smoothly. It was not a small job!

Fortunately, in modern times, we have options about how we spend our days and nobody is relegated to scullery maid or squire by virtue of gender and family status. Still, the work of making sure the stores are in order, everyone has enough clothing, and the household still runs hasn’t gone away – we just have options of how that work gets done.

Whenever I find myself doing some of the sorting and organizing work, I tell myself it’s my chance to be the chatelaine. I think of the mistresses of great households in days gone by, counting barrels of apples and beer, hoping to have enough for winter … and I count myself very fortunate to have Save On Foods as my backup plan.

One of today’s jobs was to sort and organize the pantry. It’s a very small pantry, at this stage of the game, but it is still extremely useful: a full pantry means you can probably find the ingredients for just about anything you want to make for dinner, and if you aren’t able to get to the store for a few days … well … there’s still lots to eat, even if the options dwindle a bit after a week or two.

The pantry also helps us save money: whenever I see things on sale that I know we use frequently, I pick them up and add them to the stash. Part of today’s job was organizing the stash so that it’ll be easier to rotate our stock and use up the older things before we start in on the newer stuff.

We also buy in bulk to reduce packaging and costs, and so the other job for today was organizing the bulk purchases into more efficient packaging. Several baggies of baking soda are now in a large food-grade plastic jug, and enough elbow macaroni for a few mac-and-cheese casseroles is packaged into another jug just like it.

The final mission for today was clearing out the 'ancient and questionable’ items that have collected over time. The chickens feasted today on old stale pasta, grains, and dried fruits of uncertain provenance: they can eat what they like out of the pile, the rest will compost in place over the winter. Hopefully, with better pantry organization (including labels on the shelves and a strategy for incoming items), we won’t end up with such a stash of old and outdated food in the future.

We do have plans for a cold room downstairs, but given the length of our existing to-do list, it might be a year or two before it is implemented. In the meantime, I need to remember to ‘be the chatelaine’ now and again so that we can make the most of our little pantry and keep track of our stores.

Independence Days Update

2009-10-26T19:40:00.001-07:00

Again, it’s been a long time since I updated my Independence Days Challenge but … here we go!

Planted: It’s past outdoor planting time here, so nothing in this category. I did cover up the strawberry plants so that the chickens won’t eat them while they are doing their best to clear the rest of the garden, so perhaps that counts. :)

Harvested: Our harvest is all in. We do gather eggs daily (although not very many right now as the chickens are moulting and adapting to new housing and so production is way, way down).

Preserved: Red peppers were on sale at the store, so they were chopped and dehydrated. Two little squashes from the garden were getting weary looking, so they, too, were sliced and put into the dehydrator. More apples were sent home and made into Carla Emery’s “apple ketchup” (which is kind of an HP-ish sauce good on meats), some into apple butter (wow), and some into cider and cider vinegar.

Waste Not: A batch of bean stew that wasn’t really too much to anyone’s liking was combined with leftover lambaco meat to make a nice chili for dinner. Chickens are now in the garden for the winter, and get all leftover edibles. Lamb fat that was rendered in the late summer was used in a candle-making experiment that actually turned out rather well!

Want Not (Preparations): More infrastructure work, of course – the new chicken coop, a sheltered feeder-hanger in the garden to keep the chicken food out of the rain/snow/coop, fencing in the winter pasture to make the sacrifice pasture smaller and save some grass for early spring. The pantry got a minor clean-out (old stale stuff which was then fed to the chickens, who minded not at all), and that makes room for the flats of canned things that were picked up on sale at the store.

Community Food Systems: Sold some more lamb, still have a lot in the freezer to go, and more on the hoof outside. Met with a local fitness coach who recommends that his clients eat grass-fed local meats: he wanted to try our meat and perhaps recommend it to his clients. That was encouraging! Arranged to buy hay from a local farmer who is having a rotten year (as are many), so we put a few dollars back into a local farm, anyway. And, the boys are outside right now helping a neighbour load the last of his cattle into the trailer. Helping the food-producing neighbours is always part of community food systems!

Related to the Independence Days concept, we are also working towards a lower-impact holiday season: the folks at Buy Nothing Christmas have some great ideas about how to reduce the impact the holidays can have on the wallet and the earth. We want to return the focus of the holidays to our faith and to spending time with those we love, rather than at the mall or stressing about the expense of gifts!

We do love the holidays, and we love giving presents – it’s something that we’ve always enjoyed, and it never really has been the stressful experience that it seems to be for so many people. Maybe that’s because our families have always been happiest with gifts chosen for their meaning, not their dollar value – the small but perfect gift is treasured more than a big expensive … whatever. Regifting is really cool with us, as is handing on a possession that you know someone else will get more use/pleasure from than you will (just today I was reminded of the Christmas when one of my very best friends gave me his breadmaker, now I use it all the time). Baking, meat for the freezer, gifts of service, there are so many choices.

“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”

“Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

- The Grinch (Dr. Seuss)

Oh, I’m sure we’ll spend some of our hard-earned dollars as part of our holiday celebrations, but it’s nice to know that it is okay to keep things reasonable, to focus on one another, on the gift of time, and not be distracted by any of the beeping blinking breakable trinkets we are so often told are ‘the really coolest thing’.

I just played three games of Cadoo with my family. That’s way cooler than any beeping blinking breakable trinket, trust me. :)

Think about it, anyway. What could you give that really comes from *you*?

Knitting in the peace and quiet

2009-10-23T20:24:00.001-07:00

The other night, after a long day at work, I sat in the big leather chair and worked on my knitting.

No TV.

No iPod.

No radio.

It was wonderful.

We don’t get enough peace and quiet, I think. It’s good for the soul.

What is work?

2009-10-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Some interesting thoughts on the nature of work, here, from Green Bean.

A new chicken coop, made entirely of scraps and leftovers!

2009-10-04T21:26:00.001-07:00

Chickens are wonderful animals. They don’t need much in the way of infrastructure or daily care, they give you eggs every day and chicks every so often, and chicken meat when you get around to butchering the roosters. They eat your kitchen scraps, devour grasshoppers and other bugs all summer, and are terrifically entertaining to watch. They’re so much fun, I think everyone should have a few. :)

Now, while chickens don’t need a whole lot in the way of infrastructure (especially when they are able to free-range safely, as they are here, protected by the guardian dogs), they do need a place to be warm and out of the wind, and a spot to lay eggs. We have the chicken tractors, which work quite nicely in the summer, but last winter we had some frozen toes and we wanted to come up with something a bit warmer for the hens in the cold of winter.

Some of the materials for our house construction project were delivered in a big 8x8x4 packing crate / pallet. We had covered it with wood ‘siding’ and a metal roof, and it has served as a wood shed/cat shelter/storage spot for the past four years. However, it’s not particularly attractive, and it wasn’t in a really good spot for a permanent structure so … it got repurposed as a chicken coop.

While the structure was still upright, we added some 2x4 boards for perches (I’ve read that in cold climates, chickens do better with flat perches so that they can tuck their toes under their bodies for warmth), a nesting shelf, and some access hatches. It was very peculiar working ‘sideways’: knowing the finished structure would be tipped over made perspectives a bit weird!

When the interior work was mostly done, the entire structure was lifted (very carefully) on the bobcat forks and moved next to the garden, where it was tipped over onto a pile of old hay (we are big believers in the deep bedding method). Last but not least, the finishing touches were added: an access door (made of plexiglass, so that it serves as a window as well), sheathing on what used to be the bottom of the structure, and metal roofing on what used to be the back and is now the top.

The whole thing is actually big enough for an adult person to squeeze into (without standing up!) – it’s about 4 feet tall. I crawled around inside and spread out the hay bedding, then stuffed gaps with straw. It was nice and warm, out of the wind!

The north wall is insulated with straw, which is stuffed into the gaps in the pallet floor. The south wall is made of brown metal roofing, so hopefully it will warm up a little in the sunshine – we may upgrade it to a proper thermosiphon in a year or two. The bucket feeder hangs just inside the plexiglass door, so it will be easy to check and refill, and the chicken access door is on the west side, away from the prevailing winds.

It’s no Taj Mahal, but it is an excellent use of marginal scrap materials that might otherwise have been unusable. Chickens, fortunately, aren’t particularly hard on their housing (unlike sheep and cows, who rub and bang and crash into things fairly regularly), so that meant we could get away with somewhat less sturdy materials: we had some seriously warped and wonky wood that was suitable for the perches and various internal supports, and the egg and chicken doors are made from leftover bits of laminate flooring. The nest box floor is made from a leftover piece of engineered floor trusses. Those wooden I-beams, when laid sideways, have a nice raised edge, front and back, built right in. The roofing is left over from house construction, and we were able to use up some very odd shaped pieces and still cover the whole coop. Even most of the nails and screws are salvaged from other projects.

Once the siding on the house is finished (and it’s almost all done!), we will sheathe this structure with the leftover bits, so that it looks better and is more durable.

One more addition will be a light: a light encourages egg production, and also provides a bit of extra warmth. We will install a canning jar ‘light fixture’ in the side of the coop and put it on a timer so that the hens get longer days and a bit of extra heat on chilly mornings. We had them in the chicken tractors, so this is something we already know how to do quickly (in fact, we may just move one of the lights from one of the tractors over).

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have eggs in the nest box … and not in the hay at the bottom of the coop!