What the Heck Has Been Going On, part 1

I thought it was hard to keep up with the blog when I went from being full-time unemployed to employed part-time! Things certainly slowed down a bit after I got that job back in 2010. But they came to a screeching halt when I got a new job, a full-time job, in September!

Yes, that is why it has been so deadly quiet around here.  I've only got a few hours at night between getting home from work and falling into bed.  It doesn't leave much time for blogging – let alone doing all the projects I'd like to do in order for me to have something to blog about!

I keep wanting to say, “I promise this year to do better,” but I'd rather not make promises I don't think I can keep. Also, I don't want to have a weight of guilt hanging over me that I haven't blogged about this or that, etc.  So, I'll carry on as usual – I'll blog when I feel like, with no excuses or apologies!  =)

And since I feel like it right now, I'll share a bit of an update about what's happened in the four or five months since my last update.

The last post was about renovating our chicken coop.  That project hasn't been finished yet, but we did enough to make this winter with the birds the best yet. In my opinion. I think in Jeremy's opinion and the chickens' too.  The space that used to be the entire original coop, with hen-house and run, is now all hen-house.  We can keep their food and water inside and use a heat lamp as needed when it gets really cold.  This renovation came none too soon as it has been very cold this winter. December and January have been stunningly cold. We had several days in a row where it didn't get above zero and the wind-chill was wicked. The coldest was -20 something with a -50 wind-chill! The chickens didn't get to go outside for days. But instead of being cooped up in a tiny space, they have a much larger area to run around in and I think it has made them much happier and healthier. Not a single sign of frostbite!

The coop gets insulation and sheathing on the inside (and there is even a ceiling now too!)

In October we decided to cull part of the flock.  We took out six Silver Leghorn hens (who were obnoxiously loud and laid tiny eggs), the rooster (who was just obnoxiously loud), and a Rhode Island Red (who had become our yard chicken – separated from the flock due to some illness, but then unable to be reunited with the flock, and also not laying eggs anymore).  This was our best culling yet.  We set a large plastic table up in the center of the garage, up on blocks so we didn't have to bend over, and hung a huge shop light directly overhead so there was plenty of light. We kept a pot of water simmering on a single electric burner for the scalding part. We put the killing stump just outside the door, right in the middle of a garden bed – so all the feathers and...  other stuff could just drop into the garden bed and not have to be cleaned up. It went quite well and we've already managed to eat a couple of the birds.

Here's the garage layout for our chicken culling day. Jeremy was at the right height, but I had to have a platform to stand on!

November and December for me were spent sewing and preparing for the Women's Art Festival and Christmas. Also, lots of baking and making Christmas cookies!  There were so many things I wanted to do during the holidays that I didn't get around to.  It made me start thinking about how things have gone the last several years.  This was my fourth Art Festival. My fourth year of scrambling to get enough stuff made for the sale, working for weeks on end, not having time to spend with friends, barely having time to make cookies and Christmas gifts, etc.  So, I decided to take a break from the Festival next year.  I want to enjoy the holiday season! I want to say yes to every invite to a friend's party without feeling guilty that I should be sewing instead. I want to make loads of cookie recipes, instead of only the two or three kinds I think I have time for. Of course this kind of thing is dangerous as it got me to thinking about other ways of taking a break. Soon enough I had decided not to the Powderhorn Art Fair, which I've also done for four years now. Then I would have lots of time to spend working in the yard and perfecting the garden, getting to projects I've wanted to complete for years! And I won't be feeling guilty that I should be inside sewing instead.

Here's the last big quilt (already gone to a good home!) - but I'm planning to make another one, even bigger, soon!

Don't get me wrong: I LOVE sewing.  I have a ton of stuff in process right now and a quilt I'm dying to make as soon as I can find the right fabrics.  But I'm more inspired and energized by wanting to sew and create, than having to. Constant deadlines can crush creativity after awhile. So it's time to take a bit of a break. I'm really looking forward to it.  At the same time, I'm not planning to quit selling things all together. I'll keep my Etsy shop open and I might do a small, non-stressful (or at least not-as-stressful) neighborhood house sale in December.

To be continued...

Happy Chicken Coop Tour!

Today is the Twin Cities Annual Chicken Coop Tour.  I think this is our fourth year on the tour. I'd hoped to get our coop remodel done by today, but what with starting a full time job and other distractions, we're only part way through. I'm sure Jeremy wishes we were done too!  But the coop is certainly functioning and showable.

Here's what we've been up to the last few weeks:

Inside the coop you can see we got the sheathing up on the north and east walls. The chickens were quite interested in the power tools.




Windows in on the west and south walls:

 

Once all the outside sheathing/windows were done, Jeremy got to work on removing the original hen house from the inside.  Doors off first!
 

Then dismantling the floor...
 

...and cutting that away, all but the last foot or so in the back. We're planning to add three more nest boxes under the original three and have their food and water under this ledge. You've got to have a cover over those things or they'll poop in it!
 

Here it is on the outside with the trim and paint mostly done! Okay - the only part of the exterior that isn't done is on the north and east walls which you can't see at this point.  Pics of those ... later?
 

Inside! Readers may remember our tiny mini-coop we put in last year. We decided with the remodel to turn that to the side and make the entrance go right into the main coop. When I post pictures of the north side this will make more sense. It's blocked off at the moment because the chickens were trying to eat the rigid insulation!  After some more finishing touches they won't be able to get at that.

 

We added an extra roosting bar spanning the whole length of the coop - but these are all temporary. There are 3-4 silver leghorns that have been roosting up in the rafters and attic space for the last year. We'll be putting a ceiling in soon and putting a stop to that. And we're thinking about the best design for roosting space.
 

This unfinished state works quite well now because it has been quite warm the past few weeks. But pretty soon we'll get insulation in the walls and sheathing up. Then they'll be nice and toasty for winter. Plus, on the really cold days when we can't let them out of the coop, they'll have plenty of space to roam around, and access to their food and water. I think they will be much happier.

Now, it's almost 10:00 and that's when the coop tour starts. I'd better get out to the coop!

Busy bees

 

A few weeks ago we did a check up on the bees.  They seemed quite active to me, maybe a little different than usual. It's hard to say how you can recognize bee behavior, especially when I don't stick my head in to see what they're up to all that often.

 

But somehow, things seemed a big different.  We had two boxes on at that point. I'm so bad with all this bee terminology, I don't even know what they're called (which I'm sure would be really helpful). In any case, there were two boxes, and a third on that top that had some bee food. That was to help them get through our super cool spring and the beginning of summer. 

 

Jeremy took that box off and then we started looking into the top box with frames. Holy cow. The bees had been REALLY busy! Each of the individual frames of honey/way/etc probably weighed 4-5 pounds a piece! It was intense!

 

Anyway, we swapped some things around and then put on a third box. This is good news for us and the bees. Last year our bees never got far enough along for a third box. Jeremy is going to check them again this weekend and see if it's time to put a super on. (I do know that word! Uh... not exactly sure what that means. I DID take a long class about all this and read a lot, but I've forgotten!)

 

A few days after adding the third box, the bees were doing this: 

 

I'm hoping they were just partying. A beekeeper friend says it's possible this was robber bees stealing our honey! But we're not sure yet if anything has gone wrong. They're not doing this anymore and there continues to be bees coming and going from the hive. So we'll see!

Remodel!

Remodel our house!? Finally finish the bathroom; the gaping hole in the floor!? Finally finish the front hall, the railing, repair the plaster? Do the big giant kitchen remodel!?!?

No.

No, we are remodeling the chicken coop. You heard me. The chicken coop.  Our needs must wait, the chickens come first around here.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true, but a chicken coop remodel is much more affordable/manageable at this point in time. I've been pretty excited about this remodel for at least a year, maybe two. At least since our two dozen birds got big and their house wasn't big enough. The annex was meant to fix this, but it hasn't been convenient to use, so took on a temporary status. You know: 'permanent temporary.'

Just as a reminder, here is what we've got now:




(The annex to the right.)

Jeremy has been dreading this project for as long as I've been excited about it (of course).  But I finally talked him into breaking it down into small manageable steps that take no more than a couple hours each.  We're going to attack the coop one wall at a time, one piece at a time, and hopefully finish it by mid-September!

The first step was to replace the old Dutch door. Having your human door swing into the coop is bad. A big no-no. Take it from us: don't do it!  We never would have done it that way, but the whole coop was designed for a completely different location where the door couldn't swing out. Of course then we moved to a new house and it didn't matter - but the coop was already done! So we've been dealing with this stupid door ever since. One problem is that the chickens kick piles of straw and stuff up around the door until you can't open it anymore. Luckily the top opens independently so you can open that and use a shovel to try to dig out the door. Another problem is that when you go in you have to open the door wide enough to get in and get past the door, which often leads to sneaky little chickens escaping! Also, when you're trying to remove anything from the coop - the food bin, a bucket of poopy straw for the compost, a sick chicken - it's hard to hold onto that thing and get the door open at the same time, without letting half a dozen chickens escape at the same time!

We dug a regular house door out of the garage and cut it down. The glass was broken out at some point so we screwed on an old storm window. A couple coats of paint was all this baby needed.



So - door now opens out. And isn't it a fabulous door!?



Next up: the east wall.

Spring!

I guess it's technically spring since summer doesn't start till June 21st, though I'm sure most of us consider summer to start on June 1st.  But... I'm also used to spring meaning a lot of flowers and things growing. This year winter lasted till May and everything is slow getting started.

I'm very disappointed that my entire garlic crop seems to have failed. A dozen or more shoots were up a month or so ago... and then they just sort of died and disappeared.  I've heard others had this problem, so I assume it's the weather and not just me.

In any case, I've been seeing flowers blooming all over the place though ours have been slow.  Two of our phlox varieties are blooming and the Bleeding Heart.

My first Siberian Iris bloomed just this morning:




It's hard to tell the size... and still sort of hard even with my hand in the picture.  But these are smaller than regular Iris.


They grow in a large clump that looks sort of like grass and dozens of these beauties bloom at the same time.  They're one of my favorite flowers in the yard.



In other garden news, what happens when you let your chive plants go to seed?


Baby chives!! Lots of baby chives. I saw these yesterday and thought for a moment it was grass - but there was something about it... I picked off a piece to chew and they were chives.  There are a dozen or more in this spot and a few in other areas.  They each consist of two or three little chive blades and, did I mention, they're tiny?




They are to the left and front of one of our main chive plants here, near the stepping stone. See them? Like I said, they're tiny!


This is very exciting though for our plans of turning the terrace into a perennial herb garden.  Chives are taking over this spot for sure!

Also recently I planted out the top of the terrace with a variety of thyme.  There is also some parsley and nasturtium up there. Unfortunately parsley is an annual here.  And frankly, I've never seen nasturtium re-seed itself.  (I guess it would help if Jeremy would stop eating the flowers before they can go to seed!)

Nesting

I was just sitting down to a quiet lunch and heard a funny sound.  It was sort of a scratching, crunching... hard to identify sound. But clearly not natural. I though maybe we had mice gnawing on something in the living room. I moved out through the house slowly, stopping every few feet to make sure I was still hearing the sound and figure out what direction to go in.

I got through the living room and realized the sound was coming from outside, but close, maybe on the front porch.  I looked out the window, saw nothing.  I went to the door. The sound was loudest there.  I peeked out the door and saw:

I opened the door and scared him off so I could take a look at the damage:

This old door used to have some sort of extra lock which we took out some years back. Jeremy filled the hole in with some foam stuff. It has stood the test of time...until now.  I went to get some tape and the bird came back and kept digging!  He'd be pretty surprised once he broke through the foam to find not just a nice nesting spot, but a whole house at his disposal. Just what we need.  I shooed him off again and taped over the hole. I suspect he can get in through tape too so we'll have to keep an eye on this.  I have been wanting to put up some bird houses - maybe now is the time!  And it also adds a bit more urgency to getting our new doors installed.

Yes, we have brand new, beautiful doors all painted and ready to install (you can tell by the photo that we obviously are way past due for an upgrade!).   Jeremy doesn't have the time because of mushroom stuff so we're getting a local contractor/builder to do it.  They have to squeeze us in so they'll be giving us a couple days notice and then the doors can go in. We haven't heard anything yet, but I hope we can get them installed before the birds get through and move in!

Embarrassing (aka: I Told You So!)

Those of you who remember our "freezer challenge" from a couple years ago may not be surprised by this. Our freezers are still jam packed full of stuff and we have pretty much lost touch with what's hiding in there.

I think I've mentioned this before, but Jeremy has a thing with a fully stocked larder. He doesn't feel safe, or like we have a real home, if there isn't food spilling out of every crevice in the house. He didn't grow up poor or starving or anything, so I don't know where this comes from. But he really does feel giddy when we have lots of food around.

I've been saying for some time that we should do an inventory of the chest freezer out in the garage. Winter (or at least Minnesota's freezing spring weather) is a great time to do it since it's practically the same temperature in the freezer as it is outside.  Taking everything out and cataloging it is not an easy one person job.  I've been suggesting we schedule this for weeks, or many months, but I don't think Jeremy was convinced. He thought he knew what was in the freezer.

Uh-huh.  (That's a little foreshadowing for ya!)

Jeremy had some meal idea yesterday and he kept remembering that we were hung up because we didn't have chicken broth. Grr. He'd have to make some.  He said he was going to go out to the freezer and look for...something. Chicken parts, or something, I can't recall now. I innocently suggested that maybe I should go with him, with a pad of paper, and maybe now would be a good time to just take a quick little inventory...  Jeremy hesitated for a moment, and then gave in.

We trooped out to the freezer, set up a few temporary tables to hold things, and started emptying it out. Holy cow.  It's stunning how much stuff is out there! Jeremy, with a bit of shame, admitted I was right and this was a good idea. Why? Well, for one thing we found at least FIVE containers of chicken broth!! =)

What else was in there?

• lots of bacon
• a few packages of pork soup bones
• bags and bags and bags of mushrooms and mushroom stems (the stems are for stock)
• package of ham
• bee pollen and sugar for the bees
• loads of bread: sandwich bread, hot dog buns, rolls, fancy breads, bread flours
• beef brisket (when the heck did we get that!?)
• two packages of cream corn (Jeremy had just said that day we should make sure to preserve corn this year since we didn't have any now. Uh-huh.)
• 4 pie crusts
• tons and tons of blueberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries
• edamame
• butter
• chicken innards and chicken feet and packages of chicken necks and backs, probably a dozen altogether (for the stock)
• zucchini
• roasted sweet pepper juice. yes, juice. What are we doing with this??
• banana
• pesto (Jeremy was really excited about this)
• 3 whole chickens! (Jeremy almost bought another the other day...didn't realize we had some in the freezer still.)
• rhubarb
• cranberries
• asparagus
• loads of squash
• dried currants
• roasted tomatoes
• spinach
• pears
• basil
• coffee beans
• salsa
• grated beets
• shelled peas (from 2008!! I think these are ones we grew ourselves. yikes)
• peaches
• plums
• green beans
• left over whey from when we were making cheese ages ago.

It's kind of embarrassing listing all these riches.  I see a lot of fruit ice cream in our future, blueberry muffins, chicken stock, banana bread, zucchini bread...  

Later on relaxing in the kitchen I said to Jeremy, "You know what we should go through next?"  With a gleam in his eye, he replied, "The canned food!"  No.  "The other freezer."  

He wasn't excited about that, so who knows when we'll get to that one. It's much smaller, but we do use it all the time and it's a disaster.  I think a person would have to have their freezer stocked entirely with frozen meals - in boxes - for a freezer to be organized well. It's hard when everything is in plastic bags.