Saturday Progress and the Ham/Bean Soup I Grew

Saturday came with some really nice weather, so we headed out to accomplish some things in the yard.  The kids and I shoveled a bunch of manure from the edge of the neighbor's horse corrals and wheelbarrowed it over to the garden beds.  If you're going this route, try to get the old stuff that's broken apart.  It kind of looks like dirt already.  It doesn't look like horse droppings anymore.  If it's too fresh, it makes more heat as it breaks down and can burn your plants.  Not good. 

The neighbors are very kind--they don't mind if we take their horse manure away.  In fact, if you know someone with horses, they might not mind you cleaning out stalls either.  We'd like to get a tractor actually in their corrals (at the back of the picture) and dump a bunch over the edge so we can work it into the rest of the garden area (to the left of the beds).  We'll see what we can do.  Nothing like free fertilizer.  I also cleaned around, weeded, and fertilized the raspberries, strawberries, and fruit trees.

Sweet husband spent most of the day cleaning out the chicken house, laying new subfloor and putting in linoleum flooring.  Now the chickens are uptown with easy clean floor in their house.  We got the vinyl as a remnant from a flooring place for about $15.00 last fall.  Bargain.

Because the chickens were pushing at the bucket in the doorway to their house trying to get in and flying up to the window that hubby had open for some ventilation as he was working, we had a crazy idea to put them in the yard.  We could have just let them out to totally free range, but the garden/shop/driveway portion of our yard is not fenced and the neighbor's dogs cannot be trusted.  So we put the chickens in the fenced part of our yard around the house.  After getting over their initial confusion, they happily pecked around the rest of the day.

They really liked the pile of snow (yes, still snow) on the north side of the house.  I'm feeling like that snow may be there until June.

Our dog was really well behaved with the chickens.  She's a crazy bird chaser, but also luckily very obedient and smart, so when she looked at one of the chickens and we told her no, she didn't pay them any more attention.  The trouble is, now there's chicken droppings all over the yard.  I like to be able to go out barefoot if it's warm enough and even if I have shoes on, I like to think my yard is fairly free from anything that will track into the house.  The kids are good about checking their shoes if they go out to the chicken coop, but not if they were just playing in the yard.  So this won't be a regular thing--we won't be yard ranging the chickens except as necessary.

Dinner was one of those magical, satisfying meals.  I used the crockpot to cook ham/bean soup so I didn't have to cook anything when we were done in the yard.  That is magical.  And what's very cool is that we used the Calypso beans we grew in last year's garden and the ham was from last fall's pig.  Yep, I grew that soup.

Here's the beans before soaking and cooking:

In case you don't know how to make ham/bean soup, here's the quick run down.  Soak the beans overnight in a big bowl of water, then drain and rinse them and put them in the slow cooker pot with ham (we used ham hocks, but usually we'll use the scrappy stuff stuck to the bone when you're about done with a ham) and enough water to cover it all by a couple of inches.  Then cook all day on low.  Or at least 4 hours on high.  Or until it's done.  I'm not sure how long it actually takes, but if I've got it going before lunch, it's always ready for dinner.  I added a little salt and garlic powder at the end, but I really like the flavor of just beans and ham.  The beans were really good--smooth and not a strong flavor.  The black faded out to a tan in the final product, but these were really tasty and a productive bean variety, so we'll be planting them again this year.  Yummy yum yum.

Catch Up

Here's a quick catch up post.  It's cold.  It hasn't snowed in the last week and there's still lots of snow on the ground, but it is useless snow because it is so dry you can't pack it into a snowman or anything.  It's the kind that "crunches" because it's dry and cold.  Don't figure it's going anywhere anytime soon.

The pigs we had that I didn't write about much because sweet husband and dear son mostly headed up that project are in the freezer and quite tasty, although I think we'll try another packing plant next time because the bacon's a little salty for my liking--still good, just a bit on the salty side.  Where is Springville Meat when I need them?  What?  Two hours away?  Nevermind, I guess I'll try another local place.

The chickens have slowed on egg production quite a bit and a few more eggs broke on their way into the house from being stashed in coat pockets.  Guess an egg basket of some sort would be in order.  I actually had to go buy 2 dozen eggs a couple of weeks ago to make sure we didn't run out.  And then they do not like the snow, so son got to shovel out their entire coop (twice) so they'd get out of their house.  Funny birds.

Christmas was nice.  The kids got what they needed, but of course not everything they asked for.  A hovercraft is kind of hard to come up with.  We got a few smaller items to add to the preps and had a great time with the Stocking Stuffer Swap.  Got some good stuff there, so thanks to those who stuffed my stocking and sweet husband's.  We'll probably do it again next year.

With the new year coming up, I've been thinking a little bit on goals for the next year.  There are a few items I really want to add to my preps, so saving up for them will be on the list.  Sweet husband's job went from 5-8 hour days to 4-10 hour days and now they're requiring a full day furlough (mandatory time off without pay) this coming month.  Coincidence they did that after they switched to 10 hour days?  I think not.  Anyway, he said there's rumors that it will be a monthly thing, and that's not going to help the budget any, but it sure could be a lot worse.  I have some things I want to learn and do this next year also.  We'll see how things go.  What's on your New Year's Resolutions?  Anything you want to learn I can help with?  Let me know. :)

The kiddos are still out of school of course, so posting might continue to be sparse the next week or so.

And now the pro's and con's of a birthday on New Year's Eve:

Pro: Almost everybody is celebrating on your birthday.

Con: Places you could normally go out to eat unannounced now require a reservation.  Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, then all the restaurants are closed because it's a "holiday".

Pro: Mom got a tax deduction for a baby she only had for one day of the year.

Con: Birthday almost always falls on the same paycheck as Christmas . . .

Pro: It's difficult for people to forget your birthday since it falls on a holiday.

Con: It's cold--no pool party. :)

Hope you're all thinking of ways you can improve your preparedness and self-reliance levels in the coming year.  Now I'm off to make some dinner--the natives are getting restless. ;)

Chicken House Progress

After many weekends and evenings of construction, the chicken house finally hit livable stage this past Saturday. Happy day for my poor homeless chickens. Of course I had to take pictures, even though it's not quite "finished".

Here's the back and door side of the coop. It's built on a 4x8 platform of 2x6's and wafer board. The walls are framed just like a house (seriously, this thing is built BETTER than our house). They are sheeted with wood that we bought to build our shed, then decided to sheet the shed with metal instead, so these sheets of wood were already bought. Really, I'm too cheap to have bought the nice stuff specifically for my chicken house, but as it turns out, it looks pretty nice. We don't have an air compressor powered staple gun for attaching the sheeting so had to screw it on--slow, slow, slow, but it's done. Trim is 1x4's. (And no, the rake is not holding the whole thing up!) It is tall enough for me to stand up in, but I'm not very tall. The cut out parts on the back wall are supposed to be nest box access doors, but the nest boxes aren't built yet, and their design is currently subject to change, so we'll just see how it all turns out when it gets done. It is raised up about 18 inches off the ground on steel supports and will eventually have the underside fenced in to give the chickens more room to roam. Roof is framed with 2x4's, sheeted with wafer board, then tar paper and old metal roofing off somebody's old shed.

Here's the chicken access side. Approx 6 feet tall on the outside. Window was a cast off from another friend whose wife was glad to see it gone from their place. Faces east--should help them warm up nicely on winter mornings. Still need to put the door on the chicken entry, and the underside is boarded up because the fencing isn't wrapped around the outside of the house yet. The ramp is one we built for the kids to get on the trampoline, but now they're all big enough to just climb up on it without help, so the chickens get the ramp.
Now the inside. Check out the fine framing job. Perfectly square, level, precise, and time consuming. We forgot to account for the overlap at the corners when building the back walls, so we had to scab in a couple extra pieces to catch the edge of the sheeting that didn't fall on a stud. Things like this are why it takes us so long to build something out of wood. Roosts in the back built by me and our son. Nest boxes are supposed to go on the right wall.
Here's the serious, hurricane proof support structure (okay, we don't get hurricanes here). Steel pipe sunk in concrete with brackets on top holding the floor platform, and then braced together so they don't shear off if the wind were ever to get that strong. You can kind of see it all if you look hard. It just looks like 3 pieces of pipe welded together in a squashed "N" shape.
I forgot to get a picture of the inside of the door! It's framed in steel (ahh, steel--it is sooo straight) and sheeted with the same fancy grooved plywood.

We still need to get the house painted or stained (that will be my job--hubby doesn't do paint). I also think a spring closure on the door would be good. We opted for an "out" opening door which gave us more room in the coop to work with, but also means that if the door is not latched the chickens can get out of it and wander around the yard like they did this morning . . . luckily, the neighbors dogs weren't out and they didn't go far. They also follow the scrap bucket around, so they all followed me right back into the coop as soon as I had the bucket in hand.

And for all this work, we don't have to buy eggs and get to have constant chicken entertainment. Good trade.

Hot Peppers Part 2: The Saga Continues . . .

Our poor chickens need a house. They had a house that we borrowed from a neighbor, but it was really too small and had no nest boxes and no good access to the interior except through the chicken door which is a bit small and nasty for adults, and although not too small, it's just plain ol' nasty for the kiddos. (really, this post is about peppers, hang in there.) So Saturday sweet husband had the day off and we decided to work on the new chicken mansion. We've already put a couple of good afternoons into the project and had the cement footings poured, the floor built and the walls framed. Now, the way the coop is set up, we had to remove the little dysfunctional house from the inside of the coop before we could erect the chicken mansion on the west wall of the coop or we'd need a crane to lift the old house out after the mansion was built, so Saturday morning we took the little chicken house out of the coop and set about working on the new chicken mansion.

As we were working and "hanging out" with the chickens all day, I was doing a horrible amount of coughing and sneezing, as were the kids and even sweet husband. He thought it was chicken dust, but something was seriously burning my throat out there! Everybody that came near the coop that day started coughing or sneezing.

Then it dawned on me--we had fed the chickens the hot pepper scraps--tops, seeds, and plants--just a couple of days before! So here's my theory: chickens eat nasty hotness, then it comes out the other end and they scratch it around on the ground of their coop and voila! CONTAMINATED CHICKEN COOP DIRT!

We ended up hosing the whole coop down so we could finish working that afternoon. Seriously folks, I won't be planting those particular varieties of hot peppers again! Sweet husband tried some (I told him I thought they should sit and "pickle" for a few months or something, but he really wanted some peppers on his sandwich) and they are SO HOT he about can't eat them. Now he's thinking of all the family and friends who need a bottle of pickled hot peppers for Christmas this year.

On a side note, the chicken mansion only got about half put together Saturday, so the chickens are now homeless, living in a box (the original chick box on it's side) and laying eggs in a pet porter until we get another day off to finish their new house. I'm seriously considering bribing some of sweet husband's friends to come help finish the coop as neither of us are much experienced at wood construction. Maybe they'd like some hot pickled peppers . . .

Amazing

Couple of quick chicken updates. The kids and I went out last evening to toss the chickens in their house (the kids actually really enjoy this) and were shocked to find them all already IN the house (with the door still open). Strange. The kids were sure dad had snuck out before us and put them in, but it wasn't him. They actually went in the house by themselves. AMAZING.

AND I made my first meal worthy of feeding to the chickens a couple of nights ago. Absolutely nasty, way too salty, hard as a rock little biscuits and sausage gravy. Okay, the dog got the gravy.

I need biscuit making lessons . . .

Free Chickens!

No, I'm not giving chickens away--sorry. They've just been freed from their tool box and are now happily peeping about their big new yard. Sweet husband took most of last week off to use up some excess vacation time before he lost it and we were busy in the yard and garden most every day (hence the sparse posting). Anyway, here's one of the fruits of our labor last week:

Now you might not think this looks like it should have taken very long (we only built the yard, not the house--it's borrowed), but you didn't build it with my perfectionist husband. The yard slopes, but all the posts are perfectly level and the chicken wire is tight all the way around. Really, this is not an easy task. We sunk our corner posts in the ground that was super hard (he did the digging) because of wind around here. The door is 1" steel frame with 1/2 inch hardware cloth, brick underneath and still waiting on a latch (bungees doing a fine job in the meantime). Oh yeah, and it exactly fills the doorway with no gaps when it closes. Did I mention my building partner is a perfectionist? Still need to build our permanent coop on the temporary end by the door and cover the whole mess with bird netting to keep everybody in and everybody else out, but those are projects for another week off ;-).

The crazy chickens don't know to go in the house at night, so we have to go gather them up and throw them in there. The food is in the house, but they don't go eat it until I pull it out and show it to them, then they ambush the feeder as I try to shove it back in the house--you'd think it might occur to even one of them to go in the house to eat or sleep, but as my mom told me: "you'll constantly be amazed at how dumb chickens are." I was hoping my chickens would be above average! Maybe they'll figure it out sometime . . .

The Chicks Plot Their Escape . . . And So Do We

I feel like I've been slacking a bit on posting lately, but to be honest with you, I don't know how any of you have time to read my posts anyway! Spring is in full force here with the garden, yard work, Tball, school programs, field trips, someone needs a lunch packed, someone else needs clothes washed for tomorrow, and they all want to eat 3 times a day on top of it all (imagine that!). But seriously, I have at least 3 posts drafted and two in my head and on my camera, and one more requested, so it's just getting them written that is causing the trouble! ;-) Whew, enough about me, now on to your regularly scheduled reading.

Our cute little chickies aren't so little anymore. They are growing like the weeds in the garden. No wait, even faster than the weeds in the garden--I'm actually keeping up on those pretty well. We spent most of today making slow progress on a yard area for them and planning on building a coop. Some friends have offered to loan us their coop, it just won't be big enough when they're grown up so we'll be making our own at some point anyway.

So they are still in the chick box which is quickly becoming too small. Every morning I go in to change food and water (and usually a couple more times during the day--I'm working on a better food/water system as soon as we get them out of the little box!). And these crazy chickies have filled their feeder with straw (there's perfectly good food under the straw) and they all stare at me until I open the lid. As soon as the lid is open, one or more of them try to fly out of the box (see the wing on the right side of the picture?) Now, this takes some wrangling, as I still have one hand on the lid and now need to push chicks back into the box with the other hand!

It works best if I can bring a little helper with me! Fortunately for us, they haven't figured out they could just fly up and over the edge yet--they just fly up to the edge and stop there long enough to get pushed back in.Crazy birds! They're loving the worm and bug deliveries from the kids also! Hopefully some time this week we'll be able to get the outside coop/run finished and they can get out and get some exercise . . . and my husband can have his tool box back! :)

Chickies!

Our local farm/ranch store was supposed to get a boatload of little chicks yesterday, so I was going to pick me up a few, but when I called them in the morning, they said the shipment wasn't coming until next week--bummer! But it just so happened I had to go "over the mountain" yesterday to the big city for a doctor appointment, so I thought I'd stop by their farm/ranch store and what do you know! They had a bunch of cute little cheepers, so I picked me up a baker's dozen and brought them home--over two long hours in the bumpy Suburban with a box of chicks that did NOT stop cheeping the whole way home!Boy, were they glad to get out of the little box and into the big box that my sweet husband is graciously loaning them until they grow up and he can put his tools back in it. We made the lid from some scrap lumber that was super warpy and some cheap chinese hardware cloth that he bought for something else, but the welds on it were super weak, so now it's a chick house lid. Warpy lumber always reminds him how much better he likes to work with steel . . .Are they not the cutest things ever? They are all supposed to be black sex-link hens except for this little guy/gal with a bunch of white markings that is a straight run and was the only one left of its kind, and I thought it was cute, so he/she got to come home with us also. I just won't know for a while if he's a he or a she.

Sorry so sparse on posting lately--we've had a bunch of sickos here and I'm just now feeling it also, plus the usual house/yard work and that doctor appointment that took all day driving for a 20 minute appointment with a back specialist--I've been seriously wiped out this last week!

Also I have some really fun news for tomorrow! But it will have to wait until tomorrow . . . :)

Catch Up (not Ketchup)

A post with a bunch of randomness thrown together (aka "what's been going on around here").

I've been using the soap I made with my church girls. It's pretty nice, but could have used more essential oil. When I put it in I didn't measure how much I added, and the whole church kitchen smelled like lavender so strongly some of the girls had to leave the room (that, or they were just looking for an excuse to go play in the gym). Seems the scent dissipates over the curing time, so next time I'll try to add more. Wish I'd measured how much I put in . . .

The polls I put up forever ago were really interesting. I'm not too good at analyzing results scientifically, but some of us need more food storage and a bunch of us are amazingly talented! I think any of you who said you could not do anything else useful were a bit too hard on yourselves! And I'm planning to learn to knit something or maybe crochet at some point . . . (my amazing mom can do both, so I guess I better learn).

I got some non-hybrid seeds from can't remember the place in a "survival seed bank" which gave a nice variety of heirloom seeds to try out. It said it would plant a full acre garden and since I didn't need a full acre, I split the cost and the seeds with a friend in town. However, whoever put the pack together must plant in rows and not beds, because there really aren't THAT many seeds in the pack, even though there are the hundreds of seeds they say they have, 50 tomato seeds look like nothing in a packet. SO, I have ordered more seeds a la carte from another can't remember the place to supplement some of the seeds I got in the seed bank. The seed bank did come with a very nice PDF file of instructions on planting, growing, and harvesting heirloom seeds that hopefully will answer all my questions. Should be fun. I got the peas planted finally, and am planning on starting my other plants this weekend or maybe the next in the little Jiffy seed starter kit my sweet husband picked up for me while HE was in town last week. I didn't want to start them too early--I've heard to start them 8 weeks in advance, then 4 weeks, and also 2 weeks, and I'm still a good 5-6 weeks before safe transplanting time around here, so no hurry. I also got my baby gurney's replacements in the ground so hopefully they'll live this time.

We have a place to put chicks! My husband very graciously volunteered one of his big wooden boxes that is almost empty after I put "build a chick box" on his list. I just need to clean it out and put another board in the bottom of it since it had oily stuff in it like the chainsaw. So it should be a fine place for housing some chicks in the next week or so. (here's me doing the happy chicken dance--too bad you all can't see it!)

Went to the grocery store today (by myself--amazing, I know), and they have started carrying food storage stuff! Wahoo! They had a whole variety of #10 cans of freeze dried and dry goods plus buckets, lids, buckets of wheat, water barrels, etc. Very nice. I think I'll talk to the manager and make sure he keeps stocking some of that stuff. Almost bought some, but wasn't in the budget this week.

I spent a good part of this last weekend watching LDS General Conference. Some amazing messages were given--very timely. The video and audio archives are available on the LDS Church's website. Church President Thomas S. Monson, after discussing the difficult times we live in, said, "The future is as bright as your faith." Love his simple yet profound messages.

And one last note, I just this week opened a jar of pre-salmonella scare peanut butter marked "best by Jan 28 '05" (in case you can't do math in your head, that's more than 4 years ago) and it was still fine. Amazing. (And in case you're wondering, there's only one of us that likes peanut butter, so no, we do not go through it very quickly.)

And one last, last note, because I like pictures in my posts, here's one of the snow dog (kind of a puggish dog, kind of looked like the sphinx) we made when it snowed (again) last weekend. Good thing the sun came out and melted it all before that evening.

Whew. I feel better now I've updated. :) Have you bought your wheat grinder yet? If you're local or feel like a trip to the sticks, you can come try mine out--I'm sure you'll love it!

Been Busy--Planning and Fixing

If you haven't hit the polls yet, they end tonight, so swing on over to the sidebar and give your answers! Now on to your regularly scheduled post . . .

I think I'm turning into my mother. Not that it's a bad thing, she's amazing. But she has a bunch of chickens, and I just never thought I'd want chickens like I do this spring. So, because we live on almost 2 acres, and were planning on getting pigs this year in addition to our horse, dog and cat, I figured we'd just go all farmy and add chickens to the mix as well. My local (45 mile away) farm and ranch store has chicks already and will continue getting them every week through May, but I can't go get any yet. I need to build something to keep the chicks in AND a coop/run for when they get bigger. We want about a dozen hens, and have some scrap lumber we should be able to piece together a lot of the coop from, so I've been doing some research--well, according to my mom, I've just been asking her a lot of questions--but she sent me a book and some web sites, and here's my favorite site so far for chicken information: http://www.backyardchickens.com/ Amazing amount of information, coop designs, etc. This should be fun.

Also ordered some non-hybrid seeds (I know, I'm a little behind here) and am planning on planting as many of them as possible this year. I'm a little nervous about starting plants like tomatoes, peppers, etc.--I've always just gotten them from the greenhouse, so we'll see how that goes.

Now here's my fixit project for the week:Yep, that's my son's glasses. Ahh . . . active 9 year olds and glasses just don't mix. And these were supposed to be the flex titanium ones that had a lot of bend in them. We're due for an eye exam, so I'm scheduling him another appointment and we'll end up with new glasses then, but in the meantime he's near blind without his glasses, so he can't just go without them, so mom and dad had to come up with some way to stick them back together, and here's what we're trying:I actually ended up using a dab of hot glue to hold the two pieces together since JB Weld takes a while to set up. Mixed up some JB Weld--it's like epoxy with metal flakes in it--and gobbed it on the joint. Then added some wire to the mix as a bridge between the two pieces. I ended up using a thicker wire than is in the picture just to add some extra strength. Let the whole contraption set up overnight, and here he was on his way to school this morning:
We'll see how it holds. Hopefully it will last until his new glasses get here . . .