And the winner is...

The winner is:

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:7Powered by RANDOM.ORG

The winner is Tracey from the blog Clover who said

I adore the chicken! My favorite posts are the one's that deal with food...gardening, canning, recipes; they help expand my cooking and are a joy to try.xx

Glad to hear you like the recipes...I guess I should get that section up to date.

Again a big thank you to all who entered...and keep tuned...you never know what will show up next here.  

Back in the saddle again...

While we've been "homeschooling" through the summer as planned, it hasn't been our traditional type lessons.  We have spent time in the garden, taking care of chickens and charting production of both.  

We have been exploring the world around us and thinking about geography in relation to where we are and where we are going.  

We have been thinking in a way about multiplication and division, without using those terms.  

And as usual we have been baking, cooking, and talking about our friends the "yeastie beasties" that make bread soft and fluffy.  

I am tempted to create a child's bread baking book in a story format..."Once upon a time in bread land princess wheat was kidnapped by the yeastie beasties..."  it is a story told too often in our home.  

After scouring the internet, I finally found the cure for the crankiest sewing machine on earth...and cured it from it's issues (which two sewing machine fixers couldn't fix.)  

C. is very interested in creating a princess costume for Halloween (she's been talking about Halloween since November when the candy ran out.)  

"Home Ec" may be her idea of a good time.

But now it is the time when we start the formal lessons...

It takes a while to get back in that saddle again.

W. is really looking forward to a history book that I got out of the library.

It is so far over over his head, but that's okay...I know how to paraphrase.

We are continuing on in Saxon Math and Phonics Level 1.

For science we are exploring the world around us.

And reading...lots of it.

I read a chapter of On the Shores of Plum Creek...

W. reads about 10 pages of Hop on Pop...

or a Biscuit book...

or a reader from his Phonics program...

and for math, reading and science all in one...

there's always reading the cookbook.

Locally Delicious...Very nutritious

Dinner...Ahhh Dinner

Mostly homegrown

Chicken from a local farm roasted with homegrown herbs on top of a bed of our own Swiss Chard braised with a bit of broth and fresh (homegrown...may I add) garlic...

A side of potatoes (that I grew) baked with a touch of local butter and backyard herbs...

Carrots and beets (that both grew in our garden,) glazed with a touch of local honey...

Each item cared for by either me or someone I have met in person...

Something is so right about it.

Henrietta's gone...

She's gone where the good eggs go...

About a week ago, we found her laying next to the laying boxes with a stiff leg.

We gave her some food and water and made her comfy.

The next day she was on the floor of the chicken shed, looking uncomfortable.

I made her a special little nest and gave her her own food and water dishes.

Within a few hours she looked better, she turned herself around and started preening her feathers.

Last night I noticed she was eating well and drinking.  

Things were looking up.

This morning, not so much...she was gone.

Bye Bye Henrietta...

I put her next to one of the new gardens and placed a flat stone on top to protect from predators.

But so is life in the big city.

The golden hour

It was one of the days where the kids decided to fight, cry, and repeat...much to my dismay.  

Full of things that I know I would have found boring as a child.

Car repair, therapy, unloading the month's grocery order.

At last the last fight was over...

A calm reading of Little House on the Prairie (tough to do since it was the chapter about cowboys.)

To bed...Sweet bedtime...for the little combatants.

Momma Time!

Get outside and pick lettuce.

Check for eggs.

Dig up the volunteer tomatoes growing in the front yard (now how did those get there?

Right...C's pick a tomato, take a bite and throw game she loved to play last summer...)

Plant the peppers and most of the tomatoes amongst the lettuce, carrots and spinach.

Oh my...more tomatoes growing in the compost heap...big beautiful plants...better than some that I cared for for months...oh well.

Notice the Nasturtiums coming up with their odd round leaves.

Smelling the grass of the neighbor's mowing.

And as the last of the tomatoes that were going into the big bed...

the sun began to set leaving a golden cast to the word around me.

Ah the early golden moments of summer.

What the hay!

Well, we've run out of hay.  

Last winter we deep littered the chickens.

Instead of a weekly muck out of the coop, we first put down a deep layer of leaves and grass clippings from the fall cleanup and then put hay in the chickens' laying boxes.

Every week, I'd take an old feed sack full of 2 flakes of hay down to the coop and put it on top with a hand full of corn on top of that.  This way the chickens would stir up the layers and the coop would stay sweet smelling.  I would also dump out all the hay from the laying boxes onto the floor and put fresh hay in.  This way I had pretty clean eggs.

After mucking out the coop a few weeks ago, I realized we had gone through the hay we had bought and put in the  garage for the deep littering.  

The laying boxes were getting a little muddy from the chickens' feet and thus, the 10 eggs I collected yesterday were in desperate need for a good washing.

What's a girl to do when she is all out of hay and the boxes are getting muddy...and she's out of wood shavings, hay and other good items for the job?

She gets thinking.

My husband taught me how to get our lawnmower going a few weekends ago.  All the clippings from the mowing job went into the compost heap...and hay is just dry really tall grass (well kind of)...so I bet you can figure out what I did. 

The chickens had to go immediately into the boxes and check out what the new item was...I am always amazed by how curious creatures they are.

Was I rewarded with nice, fresh, non muddy eggs...

Not so much...

maybe I should teach them to wipe their feet off before coming in the (chicken) house.

Scrumptious Saturday...Pealing off the wallpaper

Sorry about the delay...yesterday got away from me.

Well, it's been a while since I've had any continuation of my maple sap story.  My house only has wallpaper in the dining room, so I wasn't so worried about what old timers would joke about...

pealing off the wallpaper with the moisture sap gives off.  

We only got about a quart of sap...

yes this will yield a few tablespoons, but it's the concept that I am looking for.  

The kiddos helped each step of the way.  

I want them to see from tree to pancakes.

So I heated up my cast iron skillet, and dumped in the frozen block of sugary water.

Then over medium heat I cooked off the sap slowly.  

During this time I went out to the coop and got half a dozen eggs.

I came back in and it was syrup...It only took about 30 minutes.

To catch up on the saga of our maple syrup...

Maple Syrup part 1

Maple Syrup part 2

Scrumptious Saturday

Cleaning out the freezer and refrigerator was necessary this week due to a food delivery.  Yes, our favorite grocer delivers.  They deliver fresh, organic, healthy and not so healthy food for our family (as long as it is a big enough order.)  

So I started looking through the fridge...yes old rice from earlier in the week...cranberries my sister had given me from her friends' bog...beets, but of course...and in the freezer...what meat is taking up the most room...well it would have to be that roasting chicken from the pick 8 I ordered from the butchers a few months ago (yes 8 choices of meat...about 50 pounds has lasted us months...there is still plenty of it frozen in the chest freezer and the fridge freezer.)  

And through this, I pieced together dinner...nothing miraculous...nothing to write home about as my grandmother would have said...just a hearty scrumptious meal to be shared with my family.

Scraps for dinner

or

Your Own Personal Pot Luck Dinner!

clockwise from top...chicken...cranberry sauce...rice...roasted beets.

I mixed my Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and a bit extra oregano with some sea salt and pepper.  I coated the chicken with the seasonings under the skin as well as on top.  I then also brushed lemon juice and olive oil all over the whole chicken and poured about a quarter cup of lemon juice into the cavity...this lends a lot of flavor.  Preheat the oven to 450 and roast the chicken for about 45 minutes and then lower the temperature to 350 for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the bird.  Pull out of the oven and let sit for about 15 minutes (while you finish the beets.)

With the leftover seasonings from the chicken (unused as  not to be contaminated by the chicken meat) I made roasted beets.  Just wash and trim about a pound of beets and rub with a little olive oil and place them in the oven with the chicken  for the first 45 minutes...remove them from the oven and let them cool down.  They should be tender.  The skins should just slip right off...slip them off, chop them into bit sized pieces and then toss with a little more olive oil and the seasonings....cook for another 15 minutes while the chicken rests.

And the cranberry sauce...well that is simple enough...Just 3 cups cranberries still frozen...one cup water...one cup sweetener (or a little less...honey and sugar work well at a 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup ratio only using 3/4 of a cup)  Bring it to a boil and boil until it looks like jelly...put it in the fridge to cool.

Heat up whatever little tidbits you have in the fridge to round out the meal...and what have you got...a cleaned out fridge, dinner, and a scrumptious delight!

Stocking up...

Last night I roasted a chicken.  

I had to clear room out of the refrigerator and freezer due to the new month's supplies being delivered this morning.  

You will have to wait and see the Scrumptious Saturday this Saturday to see what I made, but for today, I will tell you about the stocking we did last night and this morning.

After roasting the chicken, I broke up the chicken leftovers into smaller pieces and put as well as the pan drippings into a pot and covered all the bones in water.  Then I let it simmer from dinner time to bed time.  

My dear husband was actually the one to take the pot off the stove and put it in the fridge so we didn't waste it.  

This morning I woke up early as I had received a phone call the night before from our dear Frankferds that our delivery would arrive between 7:30 and 9:30 am!  I put the pot on the back burner on low and continued on my day.  

The delivery came...Stocking up yet again with flour, yeast, canned goods, produce, and dairy delivered to the door. Then, once everything was put away, I realized that we were out of yogurt, so out came one of our 1/2 gallon bottles of milk.

I figured I saved quite a bit of time, money and energy by having the delivery made.  They drive right by here anyway and the cost of gas and time out of our schedule made it worth it.

 C. and I prepared the yogurt in our usual way. With that starting to ferment, we started in on the chicken.  

I drained off one pint of ultra concentrated chicken stock and then began to pick any meat that had boiled off the bones.  I got one pint of chicken meat pieces.  I then put some of the stock over the chicken pieces and topped both bottles off with water.  With that done, I broke up the bones once more into smaller pieces to expose the marrow and all of the goodness found there.  Again, covering the bones with water, I started up the pot.

During all of this we:

Ate breakfast

Read one chapter in "Little House In the Big Woods"

Did a phonics lesson

Did a math lesson

Had some free play time with connect 4

Did a puzzle

Got dressed

Got very silly with a monster chase game.

That's my story...

What did you do this morning?

UPDATE: Weighed remains of chicken after 2nd boiling...Used all of the chicken except 8.6 oz (from a 6 pound bird) Pretty good EH?

A quarter pounder without cheese

A quarter pounder

Two eggs from the same chicken

This egg was the only one layed the day after the great mucking. 

 I consider it a thank you from the girls.

I'll pay for this tomorrow...

Monday is usually my work day.  I work one day a week and am home for the rest.  I had a cancellation so I went home for a few hours in the middle of the day.  The weather has started taking a turn for the damp coolness that usually precedes the blasting heat of summer around here. 

 I figured I would hoe the beds I started last summer and fall.  It took all of 10 minutes to do this as the soil was the best I have ever seen.  Soft, crumbly, dark and rich, it will be the best food for our food.  I then decided it could maybe do with a little nitrogen from our chicken coop aka "chicken poo."  I went in with a bucket and extracted a mass of our deep litter from the past 6 months.  It was starting to mature to a nicely aged mass of fertilizer.  So I put one bucket on each of our raised beds.  

Then I figured I shouldn't stop there. 

 I opened the muck door in the back of the chicken coop that goes straight into the compost heap.  After 2 hours, I had finally cleaned out 6 months of weekly layering of chicken litter.  I also took the time to use some of the compost from last year and layered compost with chicken litter in order to get a lovely bacterial colony going in the heap.  Worms were everywhere in the deep layers about one foot below ground, a sure sign of healthy soil that has been produced.  

With the work all done, I jumped in the shower (I bet my afternoon clients were happy I did this!) and went to the local feed store.  There I bought a big compressed bale of peat moss for lasagna beds and mulching later in the season, and on a whim asked how much for a discarded pallet.  The pallet recycler gives them a dollar each so he'd give me the same deal.  I also got a few seeds that I saw and liked.  

With all that done, I went back to work, clean, energized, and hopeful about my garden.  But I knew after all the lugging, pushing, and tugging, I'd be paying for it the next day...

and boy o boy am I ever.

The story of "The Three Little Eggs."

The first eggs of the new year came in a set of 3.

The first little egg froze between laying and when I checked...it was crushed by a hen and froze in the nest.

(It looked like a fried egg over easy.)

The second little egg exploded upon being brought in from the cold into a warm house.

(While still retaining it's egg shape.)

The third little egg was a strong little egg.  Soon after this picture was taken it became food.

(Oh, how wonderful it tasted after a month of store bought eggs.)

My girls are laying again.  

We chose not to "force" eggs this winter due to many factors.

The main reason is that our hen house hasn't any electricity.

Another is that it's a hassle to go out and turn on and off the lights at appropriate times.

I also feel it is more humane...it's letting the chickens have a rest during that stressful cold and dark time of year.

In all we had about a month with no eggs.

I was amazed, I only bought 2 dozen during the month.

When they are laying well, I usually go through 1-2 dozen a week.

But when without, or when the laying is occasional like it has been these last few days, we are so careful with them.  

We don't bake as much.  

No scrambled eggs for breakfast.

No waffles.

New Year's Goals...Or...I like me just the way I am

Here it comes...the "new year how can I improve me" entry.

  I have some things I'd like to accomplish this year. 

Yes, like many I see a new year as a blank slate (as Anne Shirley would say "with no mistakes in it...yet.") But at the same time I feel a little silly.

 I am who I am.

  No more, no less.  

I know I will never be a size 4, be graceful (my grandmother used to call me "crash, bang, boom" for a very good reason) or have the perfectly clean home with the perfectly mannered and behaved children.  I may never have a larder filled with the fruit of my summer labor, grown, harvested, and preserved perfectly and the time to accomplish all of this and more. 

After all, I am quite comfortable being just quirky old me. 

As 30 draws ever nearer, I realize I have been perfecting the art of being me.

I am a piece of art.

Yes, I am an oddball.

I like doing some very odd things for where I am. 

Nobody I know here knits, keeps chickens, or cans things.

Some keep gardens...I know a few that home school.  

At the same time, I see room for learning.

Ah life, that never ending classroom.

Instead of making resolutions, I'd like to improve my knowledge of things.

To expand my horizons.

To become an even better version of me.

Citysister 2.0

Homesteading

Weigh everything we grow.

(Just to know...price it out...maybe I'll make a tally and let you in on it.)

Expand the garden so that it can support most of our veggie needs for the year.

(Yummy and delicious and very nutritious.)

Work on learning how to garden around the year.

(Cold frame, here I come.)

Can, Freeze, make pickles.

(Expand upon what I already do.)

Home life

Learn how to bake with alternative sugars (aka honey and agave syrup)

(In hopes that someday we have bees when we have more land.)

Improve my organizational skills

(As I can be really unorganized...but that's a secret.)

Minimize the clutter

(again with the organization...I can't even organize my thoughts here.)

Have a yard sale

(To get rid of all that aforementioned clutter.)

Knit a sweater and a pair of socks...oh how I wish for the perfectly hideous stripy long socks.

(The husband wishes for a cardigan with leather elbow patches.)

Homeschool

Expand my homeschooling network

(I am having a hard time finding like minded people around here.)

Further improve my organization.

(Again with the organization.)

Be the perfect mom 

(hahhahhahahahah) 

Overall, I am very thankful for the last year.  We set aside some worries and have begun to really realize what is important in life.

I have had this lovely chance to reconnect with my sister as well.  

As well as with those people that read this.  

Thanks for coming by and visiting with us.

Tucked in...

The storm earlier this week drove us to make some moves on animal winter housing.  For whatever numerous reasons there were several things that weren't done.  After several years of mistakes in winterizing the animals we have learned alot...and we still have plenty to learn. 
One thing I had to get used to was the idea that animals (like us) live in more confined ways in the winter. 
We like to support our animals living in a manner that suits their natural tendencies.  We put our hens and meat birds on pasture in the summer.  Our pigs have a large range of woods and pasture three seasons a year.  We use our goats to clear woodland so they always have over an acre of brushy undergrowth they are working on.   The reality is that snow and electric fencing don't really mix too well and animals like the pony require careful turnout in the winter so they don't hurt themselves on icy patches.  Everyone has a decent enough coat (or thick enough skin..and fat) to endure the cold but they also require some decent shelter from stiff winds and wet precipitation.  Basically, being cold is OK, but being wet and cold and drafty is not.  I can relate!  After discussing the whole winter "confinement" matter with several other farmers--who also pasture their meat and dairy critters-- over time, I became more comfy with the  idea of cozying everyone up for the winter.   Plus, by the end of winter, we have a nice huge pile of manure that can go on the gardens!!!
Slowly we worked up to a small list of winter residents that forced us to learn a whole new set of skills and practices.  Right now we are housing:

3 Alpine Dairy Goats
2 Large Black Hogs (sow possibly expecting)
1 medium pony
1 6 month old Dexter heifer
8 laying hens

So there are surely many ways to care for your animals in the winter but I thought I might share how we do it...which is forever changing...in the spirit of the ol' Grange Hall.  The way that farmers have been learning, and doing and sharing since the early days of farming.
The hens, per my last post, are living in the lap of luxury in their solar heated hoop house accomodation.

To winterize the goats we use sheep fence (wire 5 inch square mesh) and make a smaller sized corral around their house.  This fence is not electrified and they stay in no problem.  We throw in  evergreen boughs all winter for browse.  They get straw bedding which is deep packed (we dont change it til spring) and they get hay and a little extra grain.

The pigs got moved into a large stall in the barn which they lovingly share.  That gets mucked twice daily and they get some hay bedding which they also munch on. 

The calf is in the next stall over.  She gets tons of hay...mucked daily and ideally brushed daily---trying to make her super tame for milking...thats my goal anyway.  It seems to be going well.

The pony wears a blanket and lives mostly in his stall although he gets walks and turnout into the snowy pasture--which he loves to roll in.  He also gets dengi to supplement his forage diet and help him enjoy eating a little more in the face of declining dental health---oh getting old is tough.

We keep a little NPR or some such on the barn radio to keep everyone company -- and well informed -- and we, so far, have been pretty happy with how everyone is faring this winter.  We finally feel like we have the beginnings of a "system" down.  And we can reasonably afford our grain bill (ahem).

Of course--just when things are getting familiar--your sheep farmer friend calls to lure you with her 12 prospective blue liecester X lambs...just a couple wethers...beauuuuutiful fiber.....easy keepers....OH DEAR!  Are things about to change...again??

Chez Poulet Redux: Part Deux

Yup:
Typical our style.  Its 15 degrees..dusk approaching..a nor'easter bearing down on us...and...voila!  We bust out the chicken house in a 3 hour push. 
It aint pretty...but it will do.  The hens are moved in, thanks to my 7 year old chicken catcher.  I would put her up against any 60 year old poultry farmer any day...she's fast, accurate and fearless and she can carry up to 4 hens at a time, upsidedown, two per hand.  She's incredible.

We are already psyched about shortened water and grain hauling trips...
And I am dreaming about slipper-footed runs just steps out the back door to fresh eggs.

salvaged rebar and slab wood and retired 4 year old greenhouse plastic=free chicken house



everyone tucked in for the storm...including us!



Winter eggs...

This is our first chicken owning winter that we haven't forced eggs...

and they are getting scarcer than hen's teeth around here.  

We broke down and bought eggs from Frankferd's due to the Christmas cookie baking that went on this weekend...20 dozen cookies for my husband's staff uses up quite a few eggs.  

Let me be the first to say if you buy eggs, they "pale" in comparison to the rich dark yellow eggs of summer.  I love the eggs when the chickens have been eating lots of grass and eggs.  

In winter, we have them in a shed.  We tried to put a run on to the side, but the ground froze before we got a chance. The shed has deep litter composed of hay and leaves from the yard.  We saved a garbage can full of leaves for mid winter when their litter will need a refresher.  

We've been getting a few eggs every day.  I am careful to get them around noon so that they have been layed. but haven't had a chance to freeze. (During a blizzard I had a few days were I couldn't get out there last year, when I went to wash the "naturally refrigerated eggs" they all cracked from being frozen.) 

Summer chores:

Feed Grain

Use the hose to fill up the waterer.

Give Scraps

Winter Chores:

Fill a 5 gallon bucket with hot tap water, one gallon at a time.

Boil a tea kettle full of water.

Lug both down to the shed

Wedge your way in so the chickens don't escape.

Use boiling water to defrost the waterer so that you can open it.

(careful...don't scald the chickens)

It helps if you also manage to bring the scraps to distract the girls from the water.

Use the bucket to fill the waterer.

Fill up the feeder.

Collect eggs

Get out.

While I'm down there, I also dump out the compost which often has animal foot prints around it.

We must have some well caffeinated wildlife around here.

The eggs may not be as dark as the ones in the summer, and a bit more difficult to come by, but they are still better than any egg I've ever bought.  

The calm before the storm...

It is early.  Very early.  My little girl had trouble sleeping last night and needed lots of comfort.  I was unable to get back to sleep so I begin writing.  It's a busy day around here.  The day before we take off to visit with the family for Thanksgiving.  Reminders are being given left and right.

Remember to take the hay out of my car.

Remember to take my car to work.

I'll clean your car while you're at work.

Don't forget to buy chicken feed on your way home.

You're not packed yet...what do you want?

Yesterday was my work day so I was planning on it being very busy so I spent the good part of the weekend in preparations for the big trip.  I did 8 loads of laundry, folded and put them away.  I also packed the kids and myself.  Groceries were purchased for the ride.  I keep putting up mental post-its up by taking things out and putting them by the door.  Rose hips and jelly!  Caffeine!  Mint!  Pear Butter! Books to read!  Feed the Fish!  

I had some cancelled meetings yesterday when I was at work and was able to come home and get things ready for the ride as well.  The little baby chicks were moved to the new shed.  This was a long process for I had to cut tons of wire that was holding the big chicken's cage roosts.  Then I moved the cages to the revamped shed and put the little girls in.  This process took about an hour.  Upon getting home past 7:00PM, the Hubby and I went out and got the big girls and put them in the shed.  The new set up allows for them to see each other, but avoids the nasty hen pecking of the little girls.

I am also so fortunate to be having a friend and her little ones over today.  That will wear the kiddos out so that they are nice and tired tonight.  I want them to go to sleep early tonight so that the grand adventure tomorrow will be a restful one. We're going to cook something yummy!  We always appreciate little treats along the road.  

So I will get to see my family tomorrow!  Country Sis and I are going to have a little knitting lesson, cooking fun, a mad search for the turkey roaster and most likely will laugh until we cry about getting the turkey from the pan to the platter.  

Chez Poulet Redeux

I can hear the wheels of old man winter's truck coming down the driveway.  He drives real slow.  But when he arrives, its not just a stay for dinner kinda situation.  It's a long one.  This is the time of year that I can never have enough of.  Never enough time to get the wood done.  Never enough time to get all of the animals set exactly the way we want them.  Never enough time to get all of the "stuff" cleared off the yard before it gets buried--until the unsightly spring thaw. 

Sunday, determined to have easily accessed eggs through the winter, I took matters into my own hands. You see, we have gone through many different set ups with our layers.  We have had as many as 60 hens at one time and some large portable and stationary layer housing.  But, now, with a nice homestead sized flock of 8, our ladies are a bit lost in their large range house.  It offers limited protection from the winter elements and they lack the mass population body heat to keep it cozy. 

I surveyed the yard junk (which proliferates everywhere) and turned up several lengths of re-bar, a bunch of scrap lumber, various fasteners...a plan.  I decided to build a mini 10' x 10' hoop house just outside our back door.  Right along the path to our woodpile which gets regularly shoveled!  An easy run for an extention cord for a little extended fake daylight to keep the eggs coming.  A quick slipper run for eggs in the morning.  Because last year it was a long slog out into the pasture to get to the ladies, ok, as its on the way to the pigs...but not ideal.

We laid out the location and the base.  I snagged the learning opportunity.  How do we know if this thing is square?  The two girls and I did some pythagorean theorem.  Well, the little one raked leaves.  Then we pounded holes and bent poles.  Having a 7 year old partner proved crucial.  We divided 10' into three equal sections using leaves to represent each foot and dividing 10 leaves into three equal piles.  "Three and one third!"  She proudly announced.  Then the elder took a swing break and the little took up the pencil...drew me some lines and other various artwork on lumber not related to cut lines.  The moment of truth..we lifted the endwall together.  Not bad. 

We called it a day as no one had injured themselves on the job.  A sure sign of success.  We turned in to make soup and bread for dinner.  A little more framing and a sheet of plastic and the hens will be tucked in for his arrival.  And everyone will be happy for those short egg runs when I yell that we're out of eggs in the middle of holiday baking season.

Saving...Part 2 Do it yourself

You may have noticed, I'm a bit obsessed with cost analysis.  Part of that stems from a desire to save save save, and the other part from the fact that I just went from a nearly full time, classroom situation, to working one day a week at my job.  We made this change as a family in order to homeschool and allow for me to spend more time with the kiddos. So here are some ways we save money by doing it ourselves.

1) Laundry soap.  It takes almost the same amount of time to make as it does to take it off the shelf and at a savings of /load, it's a real bargain.  It even takes paint out of clothing!
2) Baking and Cooking.  We make our own everything here, bread, pie, cookies...we eat homemade dinners, pack lunches, cook breakfast.  I have even started making yogurt (more on that another day.)  We try to keep it simple, healthy, and nutritious.  At times we don't succeed at this, but we try to keep it good for us at least 80% of the time.
3) Canning, Freezing, Dehydrating.  You've seen about many of the different things I've done here from the Rose Hip Jelly to the Applesauce and many others in between
4) Fixing.  Mend what needs to be mended, maintain things to make them last longer.
5) Don't be afraid to ask questions, ask for help, and ask opinions.  Others have done this before me and I often ask what they think about what I should do.  We've saved ourselves lots of problems this way.  We are also always open to helping hands!
6) Raising chickens (Country sister does this and more! check out each word) for eggs and occasionally meat.
7) Our garden...our connection to the land, food sources, and lots of tomatoes

date is wrong!

Sorry about the lack of pictures in this one, I gave you links to the archives instead of lots of picts of all this stuff!

What are some other ways we could do things ourselves to save?

What are you doing?

City Homestead Tour #4...The Barn

Okay, it is not a barn in the same way that Country Sister's barn is a barn, but it is a place that houses animals, tools, and needs to be mucked out, which are all functions of a barn.  My barn's sill had rotted out, so had most of the siding.  We had been storing our feed and straw out there until we found evidence mice had moved in.  In all, it was a sad, sad, place.  We stored the lawn mower, buckets and  tools in the barn after that.

My parents came out for the weekend.  We spent most of our days outside working on making this old barn into...

...this!

In this picture the barn is still in progress. 

Already, it has already had some improvements.  The doors were hung before my parents left.  Also, the top portion above the door has been repainted a nice barn red.  A manure door was made to go right from the back of the barn to the compost heap right behind it.  And a door has been built on the side to let the chickens out.  This is going to be the new permanent chicken barn,  The hubby and I are also going to create an outdoor run on the right side of the barn to let the girls roam as much as legally possible.  So, there you have it, in one weekend my wonderful parents came and taught us how to rebuild a structure.

As a side note, the place looked so good I joked about how we were going to move in instead of the chickens.  W. liked how I said he'd have bunk beds on one side, and mommy and daddy would have a bed that folded up into the wall on the other, but was not happy about the lack of kitchen, bathroom, and electricity.  C. did not care, she was too busy doing her own paint job on the kid's playhouse.  In order to convince C. that her assistance was not necessary on the top of the ladder while I was painting the trim, we gave her a set of watercolors and set her loose on painting her playhouse.