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!

FAST UPDATE!!!

OMG Day 1 with nest box and we have egg IN the box.

(ok I will stop talking about chickens now)

Put your butt in here.

So over the past few days there have been eggs happening, specifically: 1 Sunday, 0 Monday, 2 Tuesday (yeah 2), 1 Wednesday. We think that both our 18 weekers are laying... The unfortunate thing is (and I keep reiterating this) that we have yet to complete the nest boxes. I mean seriously, if the books say 25 weeks, who expects it at 18? I obviously need to get my head out of the books and realize that life is not "by the book". The poor girls are laying in the strangest of places and we have to go on "egg hunt's" several times a day to find these darling little egg things.

My loving husband has spent some time in the shop the last days and has concocted a masterpiece if I do say so myself. Remember, its probably a little TOO much thinking but still will serve the purpose marvelously and also very handy.

Going on our green theme, Dave decided to recycle materials. I believe he used some plywood left over, scrap from the inside of the coop walls, hand rail and an old milk crate!

(i am sure he will correct me if the materials list is incorrect.)



In the above picture you can see the whole kaboodle put together. Its pretty attractive. He also used left over paint from the house to paint the box.



The best part (for me) is that the bottom of the box removes completely for cleaning. The material used on the bottom of the drawer is the same material we used on the walls inside the coop where one side is "shiny" and things are easily wiped off of it.



Here is the side view. You can see the milkcrate as well as the hand rail perch in front.



Here is the back side. We actually modified this a little after installing by removing the inside back wall so we can see into the box to check for eggs easier.



And finally, thanks to some suggestions from readers, we have golfballs ready to put into the nest box so that Pearl and Marge will know to stop laying eggs in the chicken tube and all over the floor :).

At about 8:30pm we went into the coop, woke up all the ladies (and Ted) and installed this masterpiece. I also put a few chicken butts into the box to show them it isn't scary. Unfortunately though, when I woke up this morning and went out to see them, there were no tell-tale signs of butts in the box. (no poop) so I think they are still avoiding it. Hopefully they will get the hang of it (PUN) soon.

:)

Chickens cannot read

It is a pretty incredible thing when you come home to this... we have 9, 11 week old hens and 2 hens that are 18 weeks old. We have not rushed on the completion of the coop because well... ALL THE BOOKS say 20-25 weeks they start laying and hey, we have time!!

i went to the pet store today to get large quantities of items for the dogs and thought that I would get a container of crickets for the "girls". I brought the crickets outside and I spy the cutest little egg ever!!!
IN the corner on the FLOOR!!!

well of course, its the one on the right... the one on the left is store bought... but maybe soon we wont need to!! YAY!! oh and we better get crackin on the nest boxes!

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!

Whats up? Chicken Butt?

Its a long weekend and we did not go to the cabin :( poor swood... we will be there soon S-wood but right now we had some things at home we needed to get off our plate... such as... *insert cool music*
THE COOP!!

Yes folks, it is almost done, the outdoor pen is just about completed... Thought we would share the progress with you! I will be interested to see if the girls know enough to go into their coop when it gets dark, we are about 45 minutes away from that moment. I may find myself running around trying to shoo the chickens up the tube. Who knows but if I do, it will be pretty funny regardless.


Thats the new chicken tube. Came right out of Dave's head. I am really pleased with how it came out. We were not even done and the chickens started walking in the tube.

Whats up



Chicken butt

The answer is DUH!

They're here! SO to answer the "really? more chickens?" question that shook the planet... the answer is DUH! Believe me, if it were not for space constraints I would have all kinds of chickens. That's really not the point of this small update, the point is that I have new girls. They got here yesterday and in true Lisa fashion, they were a surprise.

Also in true Lisa fashion, there's a story:

So, I ordered them to be delivered the week of 5/25. This means that they usually ship on the Sunday of that week and you receive within 2 days. In my vast experience (once) of receiving the baby chickens, you get them on time. I ordered these chickens months ago, maybe right after I got the others. They were to be older and closer to laying age (started pullets is apparently the appropriate lingo for these types of birds) I call them big birds. About 2 weeks ago, i got a phone message that stated that the hens will be delivered the week of May 21. I was like "what? that's a Thursday, they ship on Sunday's i don't understand" but nevertheless we began to prepare in that we thought they may come this week but if they did not come by Tuesday, we just KNEW they were coming next week.

Tuesday came and went, we were both on alert all day but alas, no chickens.

Written off. See you next week chickens... right?

WRONG AGAIN

Got a call yesterday about 10:30 "your chickens are here" my first thought was "where are they trying to go?" then I realized she didnt mean my current chickens... she meant my NEW chickens... So off Dave went like a good doobie to get our new girls.

So after all that yapping, here they are:

This is Pearl

And we dont have a name for this girl yet.

Seriously? More chickens?

XYes we are still building S-
wood for those of you who are asking, but also, we have another home, with a daily life and I thought maybe we. might expand this blog to. chronicle our constant goal to become more self sufficient xand learning some of the basic skills in life that are being forgotten.

The original plan was to get 4 chickens. It quickly became obvious that 4 chickens was not going to be any easier than 10 chickens and staying true to form, before we knew it there were 19 baby chicks in our laundry room. Course, 7 of those were unsolicited "packing peanuts" and 4 of them were to go to our friend, we then decided it actually made sense to keep one of the peanuts. I mean every good flock deserves a rooster right? We really arent sure what is going to happen with the Rooster to be honest and Uncle Ted he is probably not aware of this but he is on what I refer to as "soup probation". I am withholding his destiny until further notice. A "trial" period if you will. Anyway, the point of the post is not Ted although he feels he is the center of the universe. Shortly after I promised 4 of the chickens away, and found homes for the peanuts, I realized that I was going to have only 9 chickens and well that just didnt seem like enough. Coincidentally, at this time, I also realized that all (and I mean all) of our hens are the same color with the exception of 2 which are tan and Cotton the white one that is supposed to be red... So I went on Murry McMurray and for some bizarre reason ORDERED 2 STARTED Black sex link pullets. Ahh yup... I ordered more.

So we are slowly discovering that yes, Dave has the propensity to over engineer, but I also fit right in with my "are you sure that's going to be enough" personality. Best part? We aren't nearly done with the coop and pen combination, dropped off 4 to my friends last weekend and the 2 new hens are due THIS WEEK!!! Now we are trying to finish up the roosts, nestboxes and chicken pen so they can be outside and inside comfortably. We hope to have the outside part done next weekend. Today Dave worked on the roosts.
Here is a picture of one that he finished today. Its 2-tiered and its on hinges... (over-engineer alert) so that you can put it up and latch it to the ceiling. This makes it easier to clean out the hen-house.

I love that about him.
Anyway here they are:



So in this picture we have our 9 week old chickens. In the way back you can see our Rooster "ted" and you can also see all our red chickens who are gold sex links and 2 New Hampshire Reds.. (clicking t makes it big)
There is the 2-teired left side roost. Each perch is long enough for 3 full sized chickens (the lens distorts).

And then, just because it cracked me up... I had to include this picture of my girl "cotton" the white chicken. White chicken (gold sex link) is considerably smaller than "big bird" who is on the left. That might be Honker... not sure... but she is one of 2 of Buff Rock hens. Now that you know more than you ever really wanted to know about my chickens, I will go. We will be headed to S-wood soon. I look forward to updating you on progress there and I hope that the slight format change will make you more interested in our blog rather than make you go away.

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.

Chicken Coopywood

We have been working very diligently on our coop as well as our garden. You can see in this blown up version of the “to date” progress picture that the pen is beginning to take form. My (over)engineer is going to make sure that this puppy is strong and stays in place. Which is of course, how we really want things. The deck of the coop itself will be removed and replaced. The chicken door is going to be where the window on the left side is currently and there will be a chicken “platform” with a ladder that goes down into the pen. I am very excited about all of this. The chickens happily peck away at their litter currently but are confined to the coop only. Soon they will be able to forage for bugs and plants at their leisure all day long. The pen will be a covered pen because (quite unfortunately) we have a hawk that lives in our woods and frequently circles over our house. We do have tree cover but its too scary to consider having to deal with multiple chicken deaths due to hawk hunger ;)

News on the homefront

Not much has happened on the shmoopywood front, in fact, we haven't gotten up there yet. We have recently suffered a loss in our family (my dad) and so it has been hard getting everything done we need to and dealing with that.

We have been working on our home stuff though! This year Harry and I have decided we wanted to grow alot of vegetables and see how we fair. Add to that, we have been trying to get the Coopywood stuff done so we can move on. We have been busy.

I apologize for the lack of SWood information and updates (and to be honest I feel guilty about not being able to get up there) but to make it up to you, please have a look at our newly updated backyard.

The last few weeks the back yard has been a disaster with us prparing to do all this work. Just piling stuff up. Dave and I have been working really hard, so hard that neither of us can move at night, but we are both really proud of what we have accomplished. We still have to finish the coop (nest boxes, pop door, and roosts) and the pen has not been completed. But we are about 95% done with the garden and have only to install our "dane proofing" fence. In our garden we have growing: tomatoes, carrots, radishes, green beans, cukes, squash, broccoli, lettuce, cherries, corn, potatoes, eggplant, strawberries, cantelope, onions and chives.



YOu can see (click for larger) we have 4 small raised beds and 2 large ones, we also have 3 tire planters for the tomatoes. We already have eggplant growing in the center there. You can also see the little house in the background. That little house is actually our chicken coop. THere is a pile of wood out there too because it is going to become the chicken pen.





In this view you can see another small bed on the bottom left corner is where our baby cucumbers are living. Hopefully they will grow up big and strong!










Dave also installed a hose on a post for me to water more easily :)











And this last picutre is the home of our future pen. This picture was taken yesterday but today we have installed and cemented 4 of the 6 posts that form the pen.
So... Thats what we have been up to. How are you?

Uncle Ted

The chicks are here! They got here at 6:30am a day early! It was chaotic but I managed to pick them up and all 19 chicks survived so far. We got 8 sex linked pullets, 2 buff rocks (they were supposed to be brahma's but oh well), and 2 NH reds. The company put some "extras" in the box for warmth which I am eh ok with but the extra's are Barred Rock Roosters. After some discussion Harry and I have decided to go ahead and give the little Roo a try. This means that we have to pick ONE and the rest have to find homes for. Its easy to spot the little Roo's as they are black and all the rest of the chicks are the yellow/gold fluffy chick color. After watching the chickens (all day long) we have already noted some personality differences.

But there is also something else I have noticed. See this great and beautiful picture of this little girl getting herself a nice drink of water? Do you NOTICE anything odd about this picture? Perhaps you notice a chick that is looking at the camera beak first? As if it is going to attack at any moment?





How about this picture, where all the other little chickies are running away from the camera crowding into a corner?
There is that one chicken looking in the attach direction... as if to tempt you to mess with him. Cool and calculating.
He is the chicken that takes the treats and runs away from all the other chickens. He is smart, calculating and downright onery.









Of course it is the little Roo that we are going to keep (marked with a blue marker so we know who he is.) His name....

why its Uncle Ted of course.

Fat and Delicious

Shmoopywood update is that there is still too much snow to get up there. I am aiming for a mid-late april weekend up there. It appears as though this was the problem last year as well but admittedly I have blocked that from my brain. Its like swoodnesia. At this point my heart and body long to be working hard up there. I want to chop wood! (note: i never want to chop wood). I love hearing the critters in the woods and the birds. The stars up there are amazing and I love my neighbors, they are so much fun.

I love how tired I am when I go to sleep and how deep we both sleep. I even love how early morning's I get up because Django wants me to, and he and I set out on the front porch and watch the bunnies and turkeys scurry about on the driveway, completely unaware of our presence.

I love how we completely leave behind our jobs and our "real" life and focus on one thing only and that is the construction of a dream home.

Today we are running to Lowes to get some supplies for coopywood. The chicks arrive in a few days (they will be here by Wednesday) I will probably post a picture then.


Dave was bored last night and attempted more Bread (at my hip's expense)
This was his best bread yet!! I just had to share pictures with you all. Definitely flavorful and moist. We really feel like making our own food from scratch is going to be a very important part of the shmoopywood process. I know this is less about building the house and more about the entire package but I promise, once the summer starts you are probably going to want less about building the house again ;)


Anadama Bread
(says that it yeilds 2 loaves but clearly it could have been 3 more normal size loaves)

Ingredients:
7-3/4 to 8 1/ all-purpose flour, divided
2 packages 1/4 ounce active dry yeast
1-1/2 tsp salt
2- 3/4 cups water
3/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1-1/4 cups yellow cornmeal

1. Combine 4 cups flour, yeast and salt in large bowl. Combine water, molasses and butter in 2-qut saucepan. heat over low heat until mixture is 120-130 degree. (butter does not need to completely melt.
2. Gradually beat water mixture into flour mixture with electric mixer at low speed. Increase speed to medium; beat 2 minutes. Beat in cornmeal and 2 cups flour at low speed. increase speed to medium;beat 2 minutes.
3. Stir in enough additional flour, about 1-3/4 cups to make soft dough. Turn out dough onto floured surface; flatten slightly. Kneed dough 8-10 minutes or until smooth and elastic, adding remaining 1/2 cup flour to prevent sticking, if necessary.
4. Shape dough into a ball; place in large greased bowl. Turn dough over so that the top is greased. Cover with towel' let rise in warm place about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.
5. Punch down dough. Knead dough on well-floured surface 1 minute. Cut dough into halves. Cover with towel; let rest 10 minutes.
6. Grease 2(1-1/2 quart) souffle or casserole dishes or 2 (9x5-inch) loaf pans. For souffle dishes, shape each half of dough into ball; place in prepared pans. For loaf pans, roll out one half of dough into 12x8 inch rectangle with well-floured rolling pin. Starting with one 8 inch side, roll up dough jelly roll style. Pinch seam and ends to seal. Place laof, seam side down, in prepared pan, tucking ends under. Repeat with remaining dough. Cover and let rise in warm place for another 40 minutes or until doubled.
7. Preheat to 375 degrees. Bake 35-40 minutes or until loaves are browned and sound hollow when tapped. Immediately remove from dishes and cool on wire racks.

Oy With the Chickens Already!

*since I wrote this post yesterday, I have been asked to explain the Harry/Dave references. Simply put: They are indeed the same person. No my husband does not have multiple personalities. Dave is his given name and Harry is what I call him.

You are probably wondering why I am, once again, posting about chickens.

This blog is supposed to be about the house you are building... you know, the one that is off-grid?? That one??

I am sorry about that, really I am. Maybe some day I will have to branch off into another blog to cover the chickens, goats, whatever else we end up with. Really though, this is the great chicken experiment and it is meant to be tested and tried to see if we can hack the lifestyle we want. Also we are full of theories for S-wood but until we start testing this stuff out, well we just wont know will we. Like the corn theory... we are going to attempt to come up with a way to plant corn at Swood THIS SUMMER with its own self watering plan.

So you see, the chickens they are part of it.
SO now I talk about chickens because well S-wood is closed, under siege by many feet of snow and we just can't get up the mountain! SO i dont have anything else and I do so love the whole chicken thing and I am excited.

So anyway back to the whole point which is this: Harry made the little baby chicken brooder. Its bigger than it needs to be me thinks but thats Dave and I guess I should be thankful that it is not the entire laundry room right? It would be funny if I came home from work and he was like "hey shmoops, you have to do laundry in the garage" right? Because that would be very Harry.
But no, its perfect. Its made out of some wire, shavings, heat lamp and a Walmart bin. Dave then made a little screen with some scrap wood and used 2 saw horses and a piece of plywood and he secured the whole thing down with tie downs. (*note* Please remember we have 2 Great Danes which equal about 350 pounds so things need to be secured down and dog proof)

We had it all set up and stuff because the babies will be here in a week and we really needed to figure out the "95 degrees" thing with the heat lamp and such. We had to do a dry run in order to make sure the little chickies would survive!

(you don't see the coors light, you don't see the coors light)




You can see in this picture on the right what the inside of the little baby brooder chickie thing is going to look like. You can also see the freezer we have for our raw dog food. (really, my family should have seen this stuff coming a long time ago when we got the raw fed great dane puppy, it was only a matter of time before I would want chickens - working on Dave for the goats).

So for about $40 we made a brooder and the chickens were like a buck each so we are doing all right so far!

Really, I would pay anything and everything I had to be able to live the lifestyle that I crave.

Stay tuned for next week, I am sure, Dave is going to come up with some sort of critter cam rigging.

:)

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 :)

bawk bawk balk

Eager... Thats the only word that describes Dave and Me. We want to get this party started. As if we did not already have enough to do, we have also thrown ourselves an interesting curve ball.

I am not sure if this has come out of complete boredom of winter or just insanity, but we decided to get... chickens. Please keep in mind, we know nothing of it. We tossed the idea around a little. I got a chicken keeping 101 book and then we took the leap.
They aren't here yet, they are coming via mail order from Ideal Poultry and our due date for our little miracles is 3/18. In the mean time, we scramble to prepare. Dave has a coop to build and me, well I am in charge of research and making lists of things we need.

Here is what we have coming:

2 Buff Brahma's - they are just so darned cute
2 New Hampshire Red's - how could I not?
8 Gold Sex linked pullets - these are not all for us, I split the order.
3 dreaded "filler" roosters - gah!

I have a little brooder and we are making a tub for when the babies get too big for my little brooder. Dave is working diligently on a coop that will hold 10 birds. Well thats not true, we have not gotten beyond the design step. Remember folks, S-wood was supposed to be 800 square feet tops. When my beloved got done with his design's and we put it out there for the builder, it inflated significantly to 2,200 sf.

I just hope we don't end up with an 800 s.f. chicken coop.

Stay tuned!

2009 wish list!

So many exciting things are starting to happen and I cannot wait! We did NOT get up to the cabin as hoped this weekend. Sometimes life gets in the way I'll tell ya! Anyway I did promise to give you a glimpse into the spring though with what our plans for 2009 are. We have so many hopes and wishes for this year!
One of the more exciting things is that we will be planting a 'trial' garden up there. Dave is working (in his head rmember) on a way to automatically irrigate the garden and "critter proof" it as best as he can.

We are also planning on adding onto the driveway so that we can get there in teh winter. All we would need is to hire someone to push the snow away so we can put our cars/trucks off the road.

I would like to complete the bathroom. Last year we ran out of time (and wood btw) before we put walls up and connected the pipes. Basically the sink and tub dont hold water yet.

We will be planting fruit bushes in addition to our already extremely plentiful blackberry bushes. I put in a few "trial" blueberry shrubs to see if they can make the winter (heavy snow load), actually produce fruit, survive deer/bear/others etc. We will have more info about that in the summer months but so far so good!

Personally we had goals regarding health and we are currently tackling the cigarette thing. I am also trying to run. I think being in better shape will help with the great shmoopywood experiment!

Wood, we have to cut split stack and store more wood. I mean we need an unbelievable holy crap amount of wood stacked and ready to go.

Organization, we have a ton of stuff but its everywhere. Dave is a one man tool tornado and we are both pilers. Inevitably he puts a tool down and I will pile stuff on top of it. Its really frustrating for both of us because he can't find something he needs and makes a mess while looking and I am picking up the new mess and piling it on top of something else!! Can we say counterproductive?

Oven: we are working on building a cob/adobe outside oven. Ok wait... we are working on mental plans for said oven.. and yes thats right it will be a "test".

Construction will be happening as well. We would both like to finish the walls under the stairs and put the door in for the basement. That leads me to the next thing which is walls in the "guest" room. We have yet to finish the railing as well.
although we both would love the kitchen work to start, it really is lower on the list I think. We are not sure yet what we need in there so it would be sad to put thins to gether only to have to move them in order to accommodate the new plan.

Finally (or at least the last thing I can think of) we are working on the solar (yay)

so thats it so far. Any tips?
:)

I've been such a bad blogger. I am sorry. We are keeping up with all of you though, I am paying attention to goats with their shirts on and pretty red toenails. Obviously part of the reason I have not posted is because we have not been to our beloved shmoopywood. We do hope to get up there next weekend possibly and have a good look around to make sure things are okay. Perhaps Friday the 13th because we have taken that day off, but maybe that isnt such a good idea all things considered. The truth is, I just haven't felt funny lately. Dave and I have taken the plunge and started Chantix. This is a smoking cessation drug that really is a miracle worker however, nothing in life is free and there are several side effects both physical and mental. Fortunately, we have both been off the smoke for 3 weeks tomorrow but unfortunately, there have been no shortage of symptoms in our house. I am plagued with most of the psychological symptoms: sad, depressed, forked dreams... and Dave suffers from the physical: nausea, sleeplessness... Add to that 2 great danes and 2 teenagers and you can imagine our household at any given time ;) I promise though, if we get up there to check things out next weekend, i will take lots of pictures and give you a good update. I will also be posting this year's wish list and we can see how much Dave and I can get done!

Incidentally - this is going to put a damper on my camp-life beer drinking...
sigh ;)