A good trade...

 Now remember these...

They grow up into...

It's hard to tell, but the one in the center of the picture is a rooster as well as the one hiding on the left behind the pallet/roost.

Two cock-a-doodle in the morning (and every 5 min. afterward) roosters.

And roosters tend to get into crowing wars.

And that is not permissible in the confines of a quarter acre in a suburban neighborhood.

The neighbors don't quite appreciate roosters.

So I asked around.

And it paid off to do so.

I found a lady who lives about a mile away who's land has been deeded as a farm.

As long as she has farm animals, she keeps the farm title.

And as long as she has the farm title, the town can't make her get rid of any of her animals.

So she is quite happy now to have acquired two Easter Egger Roosters.

The roosters will be happier with an acre to forage upon with their hens (one leghorn and the rest are Easter Eggers.)

And they can play with a silly billy goat...

and two alpacas.

And when I went to make the final pre-drop off arrangements,

I was given not one, but two full large garbage bags full of

ALPACA FLEECE...

Yes, it's raw fleece that will need to be carded, spun, and then cleaned...

but wowza!  

Just imagine what will be happening here soon.

And there's going to be more fleece too as the farmer is getting them sheered again in a few weeks...

and I'm the only one she knows that can handle the fleece...

I think she'll be getting a matching set of winter gear soon.

Right now I am...

Obsessing over the new tax assessment in our county...it made national news when a parking space was assessed at $55,000.00 dollars (hey, I don't live in NYC for a reason.)  My appeal is in a little over 2 weeks...wish me luck!

Watching crazy play... apparently Jenga blocks are money and C. is a fancy chocolate maker who makes and sells footie jamies...W. tells her of extenuating circumstances that cause sales to go up or down...Summer...Blizzards...Day time forever!

Loving the "new" blue dresser given to us by our neighbor for my little boy...he's seven on Friday...I can't believe it.

Scared that time is going by too fast...my girl is already four and talking about being a ballerina and having babies...Good grief girly! Slow down and enjoy your childhood.

Longing for the greens to speed up and be ready for a nice fresh salad.

Getting ready for my dear mother-in-law to come over and "encourage" the kids to try on all of their clothes and see what still fits, what gets handed down, and what goes in storage.

Hoping you are loving the first day of SPRING as much as I am!

Scrumptious Saturday...mushrooms with flair

So, every Scrumptious Saturday has a bit of a story and this one is no exception.
In college, I had two people in my life with mushroom aversions.
The first was my (now) husband who just hates mushrooms...he detests them...cannot stand them.
The other was my roommate.

See, here in Western Pennsylvania, some old mines (or just caves) were retrofitted into mushroom caverns.  The most famous of these caverns is the one that Mr. (or rather Mister) Rogers toured.
And my roommate happened to spend her summers in the deep dark caverns harvesting mushrooms for minimum wage.

So she did not particularly care for them.

So over time, I didn't really have an option for mushrooms as they are verboten in this house.

Well, A friend of mine now runs a organic veggie buying club and I can get local organic mushrooms for $1.88 a pound, and a girl cannot turn that down after all, sometimes a girl just wants some mushrooms...and if you are going to break the rules, you might as well go all out...

So here you go...my go-to mushroom recipe

1 lb white button mushrooms stems removed and cleaned
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (go ahead and get the good stuff not the mystery powder in the green can...it's worth it.)
2 cloves of garlic (grate it after grating the Parmesan)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (or toast a piece of bread and grate it after the garlic)
2 tsp Italian seasoning
a bit of garlic powder, salt, and pepper
1/4 cup olive oil

Grate and mix all ingredients except mushrooms and olive oil.  Add olive oil until slightly moistened (about 2 TBS)  Press the cheese and breadcrumb mixture into the mushroom caps.  Use about 2 TBS of the oil to liberally grease a cookie sheet and place the stuffed mushrooms on the pan (the oil helps cook the mushroom caps so do NOT skip this step or you will wind up with soggy caps.)  Drizzle the remaining oil over the mushroom caps and place in a preheated 400 degree oven.

For a delicious alternative to Chicken Parmesan, cover the mushrooms after baking as above, with marinara and cheese and bake until bubbly.

What did you make this week that was SCRUMPTIOUS!
Please send a link in the comments so we can all add a bit of variety to our diets!

Springing ahead...

I've been a bit off posting, but it's for a good reason.

Spring is here.

We got out our saved seeds from last year and began sowing our transplants.

And the most fun of all...the greens we planted in the cold box have begun to poke their little leafy heads out.

In not too much more time, we'll have salad, grown here at home, for dinner.

The peas are in.

The trenches for the potatoes are dug.

Even though it won't be time for a few months, I have the cucumber trellis all set up.

I have a vision.

Now all I have to do is wait.

Springing...a little early

Being totally inspired by my city sister and her presence here and all of her goings on at home, I thought I might stop in and visit a spell.  And hopefully a bit more frequently.

Winter has amounted to very little in New England this year.  We have bare ground in February (very strange) and it is supposed to creep up to 50f sometime this week.  Unbelievable.  Well, all of the fair weather has us all going (cautiously) a little spring crazy.  We suspect that there will be a typical 3 foot snowstorm sometime in March but secretly hope that for whatever reason this year it will not come.

Robin's Egg blue keeps showing up in my life...first as the chosen color for my latest knit project.  A durable spring work sweater for me...yes me.  I rarely knit for myself.  But I was really feeling the need to wear this color, and to NOT wear my BROWN work sweater which pretty much is my uniform for all outdoor work in Spring and Fall.  I think my brown work sweater is about 12 years old and I got it as a hand me down...I love you brown sweater, but really?!  I have high hopes for this one...and I'll post some pics soon.  Strangely, or maybe not, I also went to the paint store to pick out a quart of exterior for our NEW front door (oh drafts be gone...and no more shoving plastic bags into the drafty cracks around the "antique" door with a screwdriver every night).  I laughed when I came home to discover that the color I picked pretty much matches my sweater.  I'll burn out on it eventually...maybe.

I have also sprung into action outside.  After years of growing veggies in our two 40X100 foot plots in the field, my needs have seemed to shift.  Where I have formerly practiced a very production based utilitarian sort of gardening/farming, I am craving now something a bit more scaled and beautiful in a different way.  Believe me, there is nothing more lovely in my mind than 600 row feet of dry beans crispy on the vine.  But for some reason, this year, I am also appreciating the value in a peaceful and intentional space and color and accessibility.  Those large plots will still be full of storage crops (potatoes, onions, carrots, canning tomatoes, butternut squash) and grains(oats this year) that do better in row planting and more space.
But what I consider our "consumable luxury" crops like lettuce, spinach, brassicas, slicing tomatoes, herbs and flowers, etc.  are going to make a new home right out my kitchen window and back door.  Oh the excitement, planning raised beds, edible landscape and human spaces that will turn this space into something so different.  Up to now it has contained:  weeds, firewood in various stages of processing, a chicken house, a wood drying structure, piles of scrap lumber...and other stuff commonly known in these parts as "culch".   Last weekend in a stream of glorious sunshine we put 8 hands together and turned the culchy yard into a totally beautiful blank slate.  My piles of drawings and seed lists and fantasies of munching on salad while sitting in the midst of living food and flowers and herbs are close I tell you...close to reality.

And not to neglect the indoors.  In a fit of spring organization I have once again vowed to attack the grocery budget with new vigor.  Like most folks we like food, and good food.  And so our food budget can creep away on us pretty easily.  However, when I keep it in check, I find we can still eat like we love to...just in a more organized and sensible way.  This week is "Week A" of my new meal planning and grocery listing method.  Already this week I cut my grocery expenditure by 100.00 as compared to last week.  Intrigued?!
Stay tuned.  I fully plan to share my weekly grocery/menu plans as I go.  And hopefully we can make a bit of a thing of it.

Well that's it.  A few seeds planted here, hopefully to spring into something beautiful and delicious and, yet still, useful.

Learning to build...

The kids have been busy with homeschool tasks...

Life skill tasks...

And life in general.

I wish I had learned more skills as a child.

I have always liked to create.

I love the thought of "I did it all by myself" as much as any 3 year old does.

My grandmother always focused this desire towards "girl" tasks...knitting, sewing, crafts...

But now I am wishing I knew more about other things...

hence why I am terrified of the chop saw...

...also known as my new best friend.

Hello, my name is citysister and I can't stop using the chopsaw...

It started as the quest for the perfect button.

I wanted one that was rustic looking.

I wanted one that was strong.

I wanted one that would be durable.

I wanted one that was one of a kind.

So I began to create.

and create some more

My next project is a chicken tiller.

I'm still in the planning stages but the thought goes like this.

The chickens are just lazing around their coop and yard.

I want to put them to work.

I am going to build a little box frame out of scrounged wood

 cover it in some scrounged wire

and place 2-3 chickens in it.

It will be placed in the garden and moved at least once per day.

My thought is this.

The chickens will scratch for bugs, composted bits, green weeds that are starting to come up,

and all that jazz.

They will get rid of the bad stuff and in return

place some "fertilizer" in the garden.

Then after putting them back into their coop, I will move the chicken tiller to the next patch in the garden.

Thus, I will get my garden tilled without a tiller.

We have lots of new garden space this year so this will really help get the compost that was placed there in the fall all mixed in with the sub-cardboard layer and make sure the grass areas are killed.

Wish me luck...I hear old chopper calling and I got to get this new bit of equipment built.

Wish me luck and to come out with all 10 digits.

Linked to the Barn Hop

I am a spoiled brat.

A little back story...

Back when our son was about 6 months old, we started looking to buy a house.

There had been a shooting around the corner.

I remember grabbing my little baby and hiding in the stairwell (okay a little dramatic, but those hormones make you do crazy things.)

We decided to move.

We saw a house that the price had just been reduced and we thought looked good.

We even got a home inspector.

He must have been in the seller's pocket, because he did the worst job on earth...didn't catch any of the real problems...just cracked electrical plates and little stuff...not the huge plumbing and roof line issues.

Well as time has gone on, the plumbing and roof have given us trouble here and there.

At one point a plumber looking at the lines in the bathroom showed us our pipes crumbling as he touched it with a screwdriver...Yes things were that bad.

Well, I saw our kitchen faucet leaking (yet again) and instead of shelling out $20 for the 3rd time (aka$60) I decided to just bite the bullet and buy a new faucet for the kitchen.

I cleared out below the sink and got to work.

I shut off the water.

I realized that the faucet lines were corroded to the water lines.
It would be impossible for me to fix it.

I went to turn the water back on...

No can do...when I attempted this, water squirted out everywhere.

I called the husband...I had wanted the new faucet to be a surprise.  

I called our plumber...he couldn't come until Friday.

It was Wednesday.

This is where I realize I am a spoiled brat.

Hauling water from the tub in a big bin for drinking water and dish rinsing...

Running upstairs each time I have to wash my hands...

Carrying pots and pans upstairs to wash in the bathtub...

Carefully filling the dishwasher for the moment that water was returned to it.

I am so fortunate.

I have clean water to drink inside my home.

I have pots and pans to clean.

I have food to cook in my pots and pans.

I can wash my hands.

I have hands to wash.

I have a dishwasher to hold the bulk of the dirty dishes.

I can call a plumber to fix my problem.

And the list can go on and on.

Isn't she lovely!

Why does it always take something going wrong to make me thankful?

What are you thankful for today?