Weekend Recap!

Friday we took the day off, set our alarm clock for 5am (yep that’s right) and then headed out on a 2 hour drive to Mt. Moosilauke here in NH. It is the first over 4,000 foot mountains in NH on the Appalachian Trail standing at a honkin 4,802! I have climbed this bitch mountain before but Dave couldn’t make it the first time due to some stomach nightmare so I promised him I would hike it again. I just needed some time to forget how hard it was. Bet your bippy I remembered how hard it was about 30 seconds on the trail. Ahh it was so worth it though*. I mean what a gorgeous view and the weather was incredible! The snow covered mountain in the picture is actually Mt. Washington.

Saturday I did the last leg of a rescue transport for an adorable 9 month old Great Dane puppy. I had to evaluate him and then bring him to the foster family’s house. He was so cute but so inappropriate! Hopefully he will settle in, learn some manners and be ready to go to his new home!

Yesterday, as a family**, we tended the garden. I prepared the beds and planted the seedlings that were started back in March. Andrew planted seeds (beans, peas, spinach etc), Tarynn raked and Dave added more fencing to the chicken pen to expand their area into the back yard. They now have the entire fenced in back yard to scratch in. Our reasoning behind that was basically, the dogs*** yard needed some TLC with tick removal and long weeds. Why not turn all that into yummy eggs?

I also attempted to make cheese yesterday using the vinegar and milk method. yes it turned into cheese but it was the blandest cheese I have ever tasted. I would love it if someone would speak up and tell me what I did wrong! :)

All in all it was a very busy but productive weekend. I am really looking forward to kicking back and relaxing!
Next weekend we bring home Noah! So much for relaxation!

*worth it now that I am done. ** when I say as a family I mean the kids got paid. ***Django really is the only one thus far that would not eat the chickens, frank has a bit of a prey drive ;).

The UPS Dude brought us the Sun!

Harry and I are sometimes like little children. We think that when the UPS guy comes to the house, its full of Presents. We never really take into consideration that we have PURCHASED these items, we only get excited about their delivery to our doorstep! So yesterday the UPS guy brought us another goody! He actually brought it right into our garage without our knowing but thats not the point of my story. This time he brought us a SUN OVEN!!!

We knew the solar oven was coming because we bought it, but we were very excited about it being here regardless. While I was at work today, Harry set it up and made it operational. I was going to write a post about his first attempt but when he sent me his timeline, it was so freaking funny, I figured I would just post it as is for you to enjoy! This is quickly becoming my favorite "dave" post!



12:00noon Take lunch break from every day job as a Linux Sys admin and decide to make Corn Muffins using Nuclear Fusion.

12:03 Gather necessary items like the brand new “Sun Oven” which has previously been cured in the Sun and washed.

12:10 Begin Oven pre-heating… Outside temp 85 degrees F and Clear skies

12:20 Dawn Mad Scientist “aka Welding” goggles and check the oven temp without burning your face entirely off… 275 Degrees

12:25 Begin mixing corn Muffin components in a safe < 85F area, aka the kitchen Snap picture for documentary program



12:30 Finish Mixing batter, dawn Mad Scientist goggles and oven mitts… Snap picture for posterity sake just in case things go awry


12:30 Leave Goggles on and check oven temp… 325, not quite there yet…give it few more minutes

12:35 Check Oven temp again, no need to put the goggles on because I never took them off after the last time given their level of coolness 350F, Rock-n-roll

12:36 Snap quick picture of Plutonium gloves and batter in the pans



12:40 Insert the three small loaf pans into oven

12:41 Forgot to put the goggles back on after snapping the picture of batter, Why is everything purple?

12:42 Try that again………Loaf pans in oven @350

12:55 muffins are rising… so far so good… given the slightly lower temp than what the recipe calls for, this may take longer than the 15-20 on the box. If we were using a regular oven we would be at 400 but given the solar, we are at just under 350ish

12:15 Muffins are Done…. That’s a first for me… I’ve never made anything with a solar oven before, come to think of it, I’ve never made corn muffins before either.


Every Solar oven should come with Welding goggles….

Sasquatch

I realize it seems that we are constantly floundering and failing at what we are attempting right now. Its okay though, we would rather fail right now than when it counts and so this is our whole point. We are trying to learn stuff that we dont know. We are struggling to become more self sufficient and less reliant on other people for our own survival. We are trying to shrink our footprint on the planet and do things the "right way". There is alot of good that comes out of this, and it is alot of fun too. There are also parts of it that are not fun. Growing and raising your own food (like my dying garden and my mensa chickens) is alot of fun but its not enough. Our garden is totally failing because of the rain. I think we had something like 23 days of rain out of 30 and to be honest I think that is stretching the stats. I think we had like 2 days of sun and the rest of the days rained. Slugs have completely denuded our potato plants and the radishes failed for the same reason. I actually replanted the radishes though and I am hopeful it will work.

In an effort to learn about the less fun part of self sufficiency and in effort to shrink that giant footprint, we will be considering ways to provide our own meat as well. We are talking about raising meat birds and we are talking about different critters that are indigenous to our little corner of the world. As much as I hate to think about it, a really big problem in this world is the current mistreatment of animals and the methane those animals create. Raising my own animals I would know they were humanely treated and I would know they lived a good life. Also.... I have ALWAYS wanted to know what wanders around in our woods at night (or in the day) so I got a trail camera. We set it up last weekend and Dave picked it up today to see what we got.



Something set off the camera but as you can see, it was fast like lightening. Either that or... its bigfoot... It could be bigfoot... or we have alot to learn! Chances are good whatever set the camera off crossed the path and therefore was history by the time the camera woke up and took the shot. We left it up there for another week. If I get another weeks worth of blank shots, then the camera needs to be moved. Perhaps the train goes across ways or maybe there is no trail lol. We shall see!!!

Of Lessons Learned

I am going to tell you a story. Currently this story has no end, because its an ongoing story but I will be sure to fill you in as things move along.

I will begin my story with explaining that I am learning alot about myself in the process of becoming more "self sufficient". One of the things I have learned is that I am pretty strong, but I am extremely stubborn. I do not necessarily jump into things but I engross myself completely in the research and when I think I "got it" then I go for it. Last weekend is an example of that.

Since beginning the chicken thing, I have done nothing but read about chickens, look at pictures of chickens and as you know, write about chickens. There are some pretty cool chickens out there. I have a short list of all the chickens that I would like to someday own. Last weekend there was a swap in my local area. A chicken swap is a meeting of many chicken people who have different kinds of chicken products, chickens, hatching eggs, eating eggs etc. You can buy/sell/trade whatever chicken related item you want to. I had met a few chicken people online and one of them offered me a chicken that I had always wanted. She is 9/10 weeks old and "beautiful". This chicken is a breed that I did not know much about, but it is mostly a "show" bird. I have a coop full of practical birds ranging from egg machine to dual purpose. I somehow convinced myself that this bird would make a fine addition. I did some research on the person offering and found that she had swapped with MANY people in the forum and was reputable... or so I thought.

Anyway long story short, I picked up the chicken and brought her home. It was not long before I realized that there was something seriously wrong with the chicken. She wouldn't walk. When she did try to walk she was crossing her legs over each other and stepping on her own feet. She was also shaking her head alot. Dave and I finally discovered (over the next 2 days) that she was in fact INFESTED with northern poultry mites. I mean INFESTED with bugs guys. Not only was she probably anemic from blood loss (hey those dots on her feathers aren't dirt, they are blood spots), but she was never let out of her cage, was kept confined, malnutritioned and probably never learned to walk in the first place. We have her segregated in a great dane crate, by herself. We have dusted her with Diotomaceous (sp?) Earth and started giving her polyvisol vitamins and watching her carefully.

As I sat at the table late on saturday night, with my head down, worried about the state of my chickens (incidentally, they had to be dusted too for safety). My husband looked at me and said "read the paragraph that states what our blog is about... It's about learning and this is us learning". This reminds me why I love him and it reminds me that my failure may teach someone else a lesson. Of the lessons easily learned from my mistakes, please remember to practice biosecurity with your poultry and do your research. I could have very easily infected my entire flock. These mites can take down younger chickens if gone unnoticed.

We do not know if Phyllis Diller the chicken is going to live or not, we dont even know if she will ever learn to walk or recover from her malnutrition, but if she does, we will find her another home. We have alot of love to give, but I have learned my lesson and will stick to my own flock, regenerating my flock within my flock by having babies and nurturing my core flock only.

I will keep you updated on the little chicken.

this is her on saturday, see her legs?

I live under a big black cloud

As I scroll through all of my favorite blogs, I cannot help but wonder what are we doing wrong? Everyone seems to have this fabulous garden except for us! I keep looking and then I run to find out WHERE they live, Oh it must be Alabama or Texas or somewhere that they have warm all year. I am unfortunately finding that many of the blogs I follow are in such places as Maine, New York and even Scandinavia... sigh... so much for that excuse!

We are still making our first attempt at gardening. We have out in the garden, tomato plants, bean plants, lettuce, carrots, radishes, green peppers, hot peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, garlic, corn, watermelon, eggplant, squash of some sort but forget what I put in the ground because I am THAT gardener and strawberries. Unfortunately, the sun is not shining on Swood South *sigh*. We have had only a handful of sunny warm days. For example, today's high was 58 degrees and no sun. Yesterday was lower 50's and rain. Our plants are not loving the lack of sunshine at all.


Here we have lettuce (sadly these are the only thing that really ENJOYS water and they are still not growing in all this rain) and in the background we also have beans.


Corn... this is the one I am most excited about... It is also the bed that Django keeps JUMPING INTO! So i have many corn plants that have been trampled by the dog.


This is a tomato plant. I would love to tell you that this is one of the tomatoes we started but that would e a lie. We actually purchased this one. The started plants are behind, maybe at like 3 inches tall... (sigh again)



Dave has managed to engineer this contraption. Here we have a miracle grow feeder that we bought years ago, and a 2-liter bottle. We are going to be putting our own home grown fertilizer that we are making with our composter (mmmm compost tea) and putting it in the bottle and spreading it with water. He rocks.

There is one thing that we are growing fairly well... that is eggs. You are viewing 2 eggs, both came from my chickens. The one on the left was given to me by our biggest chicken Pearl. The egg on the right was a gift from Marge this morning. She is the smallest chicken we have that is laying. (we only have 2 laying, the others are only 13 weeks old)



So thats it for me. I hope you are all well! We will see you soon!

Is that a dishrag in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

Today was a perfect day here at Shmoopywood South. After 4 days straight of cold and rain, we were all very thankful to see the sunshine that's for sure! This morning we were greeted at zero dark thirty by a very enthusiastic Django. He had to go potty. Django has a digestive issue, he will wait like 3 days before he will go potty and then every now and then he has his emergency potty runs. If we are lucky its in teh day time and not at 3am. Poor guy! Then I got up and slid my ladybug slippery rain shoes on and off I went to do my chicken chores.

As you know, Dave and I try very hard to be aware of what we do and how it effects the environment. Like dishtowels for example, we use them often because we do not use paper towels. We use them to clean counters and dry dishes, we use them as napkins and when they are so used that they are not useful for that purpose, they become rags and they are reborn into a whole new use. Unfortunately, when they change into the rags it leaves me without dish towels. (Dave will read this and not believe that I just gave up a perfect opportunity to use the word Metamorphosis in a sentence.) SO today we purchased NEW dishtowels. I am like the chickens in a way where something as simple as buying new dishtowels entertains me and makes me as giddy as they are first thing in the morning when I lift the door. For this reason, I would like to share my new towels with you good people.



Ok so those are not the ones that I bought, and I shamelessly nabbed this photo off of Google (sorry rightful owner of the pictures of the towels) but they were there. I got ones that are beige with black writing that says "what goes around comes around". I just love them. They are 60% regenerated cotton and 40% recycled Polyester and they were not expensive.

I also took some time in the garden this week in between rainstorms. I put the rest of the starters into the ground. I just couldn't stand to see them getting killed off mercilessly here inside my house. We worked so hard to get them to this point and to see them gnawed on by wayward Maine Coon cats and catapulted (ha! catapult) across the room by dogs was just too sad for me. I took the risk and put them in the ground. The next day the rains started. I truly believe that I am cursed to never grow anything with dirt. When I get a chance I will take some pics. Incidentally, any of you "followers" want to give me advice on potatoes? onions? Garlic? We have NO idea what we are doing and having a hard time knowing when to start harvesting these things in particular.

Thanks!

Chickentopia and other things

Things are happening in the garden! Personally, I feel this is a huge accomplishment for me. I have never been able to grow anything. We have some starters that have met their demise due to cats or other horrible reasons (such as the great dane sweeping them right off the counter top with his tail after being excited). I am happy to say that alot of the things that we have planted are actually growing!
Here is some update:

This is my very first strawberry plant ever. We now have 3 pots full of them. I decided to hang them because they are easier for us to keep safe from birds and other critters as they are hanging right outside our door in the back yard.








On the far right, is our onions, we got these on a "whim" at the farm store when we went to get prices on some dirt. And the big bushy things... those are some bad ass eggplants! They are BEASTS!! they don't care about wind/cold they just keep growing!




















Course plants are not the only thing we are growing here at Shmoopywood South... no my friends...we are also growing chickens, and coops. SO I have included some chicken cuteness just to keep those of you who are so chicken oriented happy.
Incidentally, anyone else notice that having chickens is like having an addiction? After greeting my dog at the door after work, I greet my husband and then its outdoors to greet my chickens.
We have a pen but there is currently no chicken way into it, as it is not attached yet to the coop. We also have not finished the top or cover to the pen at this time. We will get to it, Dave made a cat house that models our home a long time ago for a cat that used to live here and it has stood abandoned for years, so we moved the tiny little house into the chicken coop so they can go into it to get shelter or get away from Uncle Ted :)



On the right we have my favorite chicken, this is Cotton. Cotton is showing the other chicks how to take a dirt bath.











And for our last shot, here are some of the girls (Patty, Myopic chicken, and the unnamed chicken in the back) checking out the little house. I can't wait for them to start perching atop the house.

Phase II - The Great Bread Experiment

Morning

I know that this blog is primarily about building S-wood and the steps we are taking to make it off-grid and green. Part of us becoming more self-sustained is the raising of chickens and learning to do things that we would not normally do. Dave and I are very eager and excited to get back to building at S-wood but the word is the snow is 6 feet deep on the driveway. Despite the 50 degree weather yesterday, it will take a while before we can get up there and begin again. In the mean time, we need to keep ourselves busy. i have been learning to jog, and Dave... well he is cooking (which makes my jogging more necessary).

I think baking bread is one of the hardest things on the planet. Dave is working hard to master the art of bread from scratch. So is born the "Great Bread Experiment".
Last weekend Dave began the process, there was some angst let me assure you it was not an easy process. He was using the Mother Earth News - Crusty Bread recipe and well it wasn't going very well at first. The results were 2 great HUNKS of weighty sour-dough type breads. Tarynn, Andrew and I, being great sports gobbled it up to help boost his ego. OK that was a lie, it was REALLY good so we ate it all. Now I need to jog more.

Today Dave baked the remainder of the sour-dough (shown left) and began a new experiment. Rosemary Garlic Focaccia. The results were very enthusiastically inhaled by all. I did get a picture prior to the dismantling of the bread.

Behold the great bread experiment!



































I do believe once he has this mastered, I need to shake it up a bit and have him do it in our "Someday soon" cob oven at Swood... don't you?

Coopy-wood

Come on, that's funny! I can't take the credit for the title but I still chuckle over it every time I think about it. Ah yes, the point of my story. When I posted earlier I was fretting over the possibility of the new chicken coop being 800s.f. I am here to tell you however, that this is not going to be an issue. Dave and I were discussing today all the necessities of the coop, electricity for light and possible heat, perches, nesting boxes, etc. You name it and we were talking about it. I think all this enthusiasm over raising animals stems partly from learning to take care of ourselves and being more self sustained, but part also goes to boredom.

Funny thing about all this conversation today is that this whole time that we have been trying to design the coop, there was actually an already made (but needs work) coop in our back yard that we are already paying taxes on! Oh sure, it isn't technically a coop but it could be and much faster than building from scratch!! It needs repair work and rearranging and it desperately needs airing out, although I doubt that the chickens will care much, but its a good size and its already here. Its Dave's playhouse that he used to play in as a child.

All of our research was not made in vain mind you... we have to build a Coopywood at Shmoopywood.... *couldn't resist.

So here she is... Coopywood




(where would we be without a gratuitous "Lisa" shot :)