In the hen house.

 

So what is the best thing to be doing at 39+ weeks prego, paint a hen house of course.  The kids loved it and we even attracted the neighbors to help.  I did build this with the help of my husband and neighbor.  I got all excited when I seen them on www.backyardchickens.com, I knew I had to build one.  The house is a mixture of left over colors from the house.  Some of it is from a bedroom, mosre from the kitchen.  We just opened old cans and everyone grabbed a brush!

As you can see, everyone painted!  Even the 2 year old. Can you see the huge amount of paint on her brush!  I was trying to get her to paint the base!

    

What I love most is great neighbors.  Especially the kind that says “I DONT PAINT”, but can’t resist the paint brush.  We are always blessed to have them as our neighbors.

So here it is.  The lift is again thanks to my neighbor, he figured it was too heavy for me to lift.  This is just a simple design made from scraps. Of course, %1 is still painting the underneath.

 

I have 2 hen boxes for the girls to lay eggs. I still have several months.   And the other picture is the opening.

 

Of course, we had a few other things painted, like noses.  I did put #2 and #3 to work cleaning brushes, but then they were off bathing themselves in the paint bucket.

All I could think of, as my husband griped about having to clean the brushes was Amy’s post about the top 10 reasons to have a large family, #1 -  THEY SURE ARE FUN.

Yes, we would have had a great time even with 2 or 1 kids in the paint bucket, but having 3 just made it crazier that you could not stop laughing as paint was being slung from brush to house.

 

I did get said paint off all of them, before sending them to bed.  Said brushes, no.

~trish

FOOD, INC

I heard a little bit about Food, Inc from some friends, but I did not give it much mind.  I happened to catch the show midstream on TV.  I just found a link to the show, so you can watch it from your computer.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1472879887/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=pbs

I will say, after first viewing this.  Our food shopping will take a new focus.  My previous focus was cheap!  After watching, the utmost desire of cheap is what has helped drive our food production to where it is.  I will take less options, but true food.  I am willing to buy less, I already do, and cook from scratch.  This will be a slow process, but I believe we will be converted almost a 100% to decentralized food sources over the next year or two.

After watching, the strong need for this was awaken. My father died from non-hodgkin’s Lymphoma due to environmental exposure that he received earlier in his life.  His cancer first showed up in his early thirties and finally ended 6 months before turning 50.  Environmental factors that can cause his type of cancer is solvents, pesticides and herbicides, and agent orange.

As you watch, you can avoid many of the negative impacts by buying Organic.  Well, I am not about to take on that large investment, especially with this growing family of soon to be 4 children.  I do know, to limit the amount of NON-FOOD ingredients (all those ingredients that you can not pronounce), just cook from scratch.  And I like cooking from scratch, it is cheaper.  I have a great blog that has helped in a lot of bulk shopping/ cooking from scratch.

www.hillbillyhousewife.com

She has some amazing recipes.

Day by day, we will wean ourselves from all the prepackaged altered food and clean out our kitchen.  The first step will be meat.  No more meat buying from the groceries.  I plan to use a local butcher/slaughter house.  By directly from them or buy from a ranch to send there.  I also have a wonderful local seafood wholesale market.  So I know I will still be buying in bulk, on a large scale, if I can not find another family to go in with us.  So I will have to be diligent in tracking my inventory in my freezer.

I wanted to make sure that I could share this with you.  Please leave me a comment if you are having any of these same thoughts or not.

~trish

Reaping more for what you Sow!

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/complant.html In our garden, I have had no success in planting corn. I do not think that it is the area, since my neighbors successfully had planted corn before they rebuilt their home.  We did a pH test to check to see if our soil is sweet or sour for growing.  Thankfully, we have been blessed with a neutral soil, pH = 7.3.  So we are thinking that soil just needs more nutrients. Well, with all this RESTING!  I have been watching a lot of gardening shows, especially the Victory Garden.  One thing I do love is all of the focus on Organic gardening, by using natural processes to grow successfully.  I like the idea of organic garden, because I am not all that thrilled about spending money to make my garden grow.  In my previous garden, I had industrial compost brought in, unfortunately, it was filled with broken glass. In my “research”, I learned about pairing or “companion” plants together to help each other.  For example, corn and green beans are really good together, because green beans like to store nitrogen in the soil and corn really want that nitrogen.  I am not going to get into all the science in this, but I did find this awesome chart. Table 1. COMPANION PLANTING CHART FOR HOME & MARKET GARDENING (compiled from traditional literature on companion planting) CROP COMPANIONS INCOMPATIBLE Asparagus Tomato, Parsley, Basil   Beans Most Vegetables & Herbs   Beans, Bush Irish Potato, Cucumber, Corn, Strawberry, Celery, Summer Savory Onion Beans, Pole Corn, Summer Savory, Radish Onion, Beets, Kohlrabi, Sunflower Cabbage Family Aromatic Herbs, Celery, Beets, Onion Family, Chamomile, Spinach, Chard Dill, Strawberries, Pole Beans, Tomato Carrots English Pea, Lettuce, Rosemary, Onion Family, Sage, Tomato Dill Celery Onion & Cabbage Families, Tomato, Bush Beans, Nasturtium   Corn Irish Potato, Beans, English Pea, Pumpkin, Cucumber, Squash Tomato Cucumber Beans, Corn, English Pea, Sunflowers, Radish Irish Potato, Aromatic Herbs Eggplant Beans, Marigold   Lettuce Carrot, Radish, Strawberry, Cucumber   Onion Family Beets, Carrot, Lettuce, Cabbage Family, Summer Savory Beans, English Peas Parsley Tomato, Asparagus   Pea, English Carrots, Radish, Turnip, Cucumber, Corn, Beans Onion Family, Gladiolus, Irish Potato Potato, Irish Beans, Corn, Cabbage Family, Marigolds, Horseradish Pumpkin, Squash, Tomato, Cucumber, Sunflower Pumpkins Corn, Marigold Irish Potato Radish English Pea, Nasturtium, Lettuce, Cucumber Hyssop Spinach Strawberry, Faba Bean   Squash Nasturtium, Corn, Marigold Irish Potato Tomato Onion Family, Nasturtium, Marigold, Asparagus, Carrot, Parsley, Cucumber Irish Potato, Fennel, Cabbage Family Turnip English Pea Irish Potato http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/complant.html

So I planted 2 rows of a mix of corn and green beans and one with spaghetti squash.  Now I used bush green beans and not pole green beans.  This is mostly from my days of FFA, when my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Lynn, would plant the bush green beans with the corn.  SO the bush will grow like a bush and the poles will grow up a pole.  So simple, it is often over looked.  Now this is also something you can try in a large pot, if you are not about to till up your yard. 

 

I also found some great resources for pest control. My carrots got invaded by ants that made it very painful at times to harvest and clean.  I did not want to put the ant killer on it, because all I could think of was that I would poison my family when we ate the carrots.  I just found this website: www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com.

Here is a table on some of my common problems.

PEST	Remedy	HOW
Ants	Borax mixed with peanut butter or something sweet, such as honey.	the ants eat it and take it back to their nest to share with other ants, hopefully poisoning all in the nest.
	Boiling water can then be poured on as many ants as you can reach (as long as it's safe and away from plants).	Boiling water can of course be poured down an ant nest to kill the queen — if you are lucky enough to find an easy to reach nest, but usually they are very deep and constructed to stop rain and flooded water going in.
Aphids	Pour boiling water over crushed rhubarb leaves then leave to soak for several days. Strain, add a good squirt of detergent and dilute enough so that it looks like weak tea and spray over pest infested plants. Repeat every 10 days or so.	Rhubarb leaves are semi-poisonous to us, and a tea brewed from rhubarb leaves poisons smaller critters, such as aphids, mites, white fly, caterpillars etc
Snails	Beer in a shallow pan in the garden to trap snails and slugs overnight. Vinegar in a shallow pan will do the same thing.
	Put a band of fine sand about 1cm (1/4") high around the garden edge or base of plants	Snails dislike sand, which they do not like to cross.

 

garden pest control mixtures consists of and how they work:

• Smell: Garlic, tobacco, rhubarb, fish and other strong smelling substances that are used to repel pests.
• Gases and odor molecules: Many plants give off natural odors or have volatile oils which some bugs find unpleasant. Often these odors or oils are a warning to bugs that the plant contains its own built in insecticide. Concoctions made from these plants will deter pests.
• Heat or fumes: Chilies, kerosene, methylated spirits, salt etc, will burn, harm or kill pests.
• Oil: Mineral oil, vegetable oils and proprietary oils, such as those made with cottonseed oil, will suffocate soft-bodied pests.
• Soap: Natural vegetable based soaps or detergents are added to sprays in small amounts to make them stick to plants. Many insects dislike and are harmed by soap also.

 

The GOOD BUGS!

LADY BUGS:

Any faithful ladybugs you have are true beneficial insects and devour aphids, scale, mealybugs and other small soft-bodied insects. They soon clean up the aphids on a plant... if fact you can carefully move ladybugs around your garden if you wish. As long as they are well fed, they will stay true to you.

Parasite Wasps

These are tiny wasps quite unlike big yellow-striped bullies that sting. Parasitic wasps are divided into many species and the adults feed on nectar and pollen, therefore planting flowers near your vegetables encourages these little winged creatures.

The family of Chalcid wasps include Trichogramma which kill the eggs of the moth species Lepidoptera, such as codling moth and others which turn into ravenous caterpillar pests.

The bug information on the good and the bad ones, all came from www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com.  For extended information, please visit them.

So I am excited to see things grow.  Here is my favorite evening view.

This is an evening picture, so it is a bit blurry.  I am excited to have my summer squash in bloom.

happy sowing!

~trish

My pets makes me breakfast!

This is the true reason I have chickens.  Back to being the ultimate cheapo! 

I have a free range hen and she likes to hide her eggs.  But we found her. 

She is a bit of my challenge.  She went free range about 8 months ago.  Since then, she has been laying eggs for my neighbors, frustrating me, since I am feeding her and she is feeding the neighbors!

Well, we found them!  Yeah!  Especially, when eggs can range about $2.40 a dozen, this was sure glee!

I was so excited!  We had them for breakfast already and I must say, yum!  She lays us eggs that are half yoke! So even when you dilute them with milk, the scrambled eggs still are yellower than regular white eggs scrambled.

I am not sure what type of chicken she is and she likes to hide from me.  She has extra toes and has a bit of a fluff style to her. I am not sure if it is her bread that creates these eggs or is it the benefit of good organic free range eggs.  Either way, she is a great pet.

~trish

My Backyard Chickies!

This is our third set of chicks.  We got our first set last year and then one of hens had a few more.  Well free range does not always work out well, especially when your neighbor gives them away for you.  So now we down to one hen left, Big Bird.  Well Big Bird makes it between the neighbors and our house.  We feed her and they get the eggs. 

Well, I am not sure if this is working for us and I would hate to have them give her away on us, so I needed to entice her back to the coop.  Now I will admit, my coop needs some rehab.  I took a design I had seen from a local ministry seed bank and put it to work in my yard.  Well, a few flaws, I do not have a laying hen house or a place for them to scratch.  So I have a few ideas how to make the corrections thanks to www.backyardchickens.com.

Thankfully, our local 4H club is selling baby chicks at the feed store down the road.  So we loaded up and went to get 2, to help bring Big Bird to the coop.  Well, we got there and they just had sold the last ones.  Lucky for us, the gal called to bring more up, so we hung around until they got there.  Well, 2 turned into 6! #2 and I could not help ourselves, we liked the yellow ones, black ones, and the turkins. 

For now, we have them on the porch with a light.  The chicks will be here for about the next 2 months.  I was hoping for older ones so I would not have this part of chickens, but the benefit is, they will be very tame chicks.  Especially with all the attention they are getting, below is  #3’s hand of love to them.  She has already been banded to “love” them without supervision.  She has fed them cookies and had to know what poop feels like. 

 

In about 6 months, I should get to boast that my pets make my breakfast.

~trish

Looting the Garden for Dinner

Here is my loot from my garden: Mustard Greens, Carrots, and broccoli. The broccoli became a snack through the afternoon.  The carrots are being served with ranch dressing with dinner.  I cooked the mustard greens for dinner too.  We are having it all with chicken and dumplings.

I am still super excited about my carrots.  I am also excited about planting tomorrow.  Hopefully, it will not be cold.  What a thought to say in the beginning of March.  I just cannot believe this weather and I am done with it.  Bring on the heat.

Next fall, I do plan to plant more carrots, broccoli, and bok choy.  I am not sure if I will bother with tomatoes or any other sensitive to the cold plants.  Maybe even a few potatoes.   Happy to know that we are eating from the garden tonight.  yum-yum.

Still hope for the garden

We are beginning the Spring garden this week.  We are trying to keep the things that are still going strong, but we have already had a miscommunication.  The Bok Choy was chopped up by the rotor tiller. 

We still have the carrots going!

And the broccoli!

We still have a ton of mustard greens and onions spotted all over the garden.

 

I have my seeds in the fridge bagged by the month they should be planted, so soon we will pull them out and make our plan for our little plot.  Some love to my husband and his hard work for me.

The smell of that fresh turned dirt made it hard for me to leave, but I had scrapbooking to do!

The Remnants of My Garden

Oh, they look so pretty!  I picked all of these tomatoes just before that last of the big freezes came through at the beginning of this month.  I had read, if you know that the freeze is coming and you can not protect against it, to pick all the tomatoes and set them on the counter to ripen.  We were skeptics, but it worked.

See, being in South Florida, we grow all year round.  I know my Northern junkies, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!  One thing about it, is we typically do not get hard freezes.  Well, this year we did and it was a long one!  I just supplement my groceries with my garden.  I am not the best producer, but I figure I have years to get there.  I do mostly, well that is what Southern women do, wear funny hats and grow tomatoes!  I am a Ouiser at heart, (just watch Steel Magnolias).

So here is the ugly!  This is what the frost did to me!

This is what is left of my tomato plants.  Toast!  The first row is my younger flock, there is some hope.  I have some new growth from the bottom, so they might still produce before my new plantings can.  My producing flock, yuk.  Nothin' but cooked greens is what they look like.  I should have taken pics when I had a chance.  They were full of green tomatoes, full of life. These were the best tomatoes I have ever grown and poof, gone in a week.

I also lost my blooming spaghetti squash and bell peppers.  They were decimated in the freeze with out even a nub to photograph.

I do have life still!  These are my mustard greens!  Yum, yum!  I think they got greener in the freeze.

This is Bok Choy.  I actually took about a month to remember what it was when it came up.  I forgot all about planting it.  Vietnamese noodles it will go!

Broccoli is still progressing, along with the cauliflower and onions.

I have the onions all over in the ground.  I love it in the next few months when they get huge.

I am combing my seed inventory for my next planting round.  I need to first get the weather forecast together to figure out if it will freeze again in February, I am hoping for just a chill. 

I am in a rush for time.  I am slowly becoming in pain in my back from this pregnancy.  From other friends, I am learning that at 4 pregnancies your body no longer can keep the baby in the belly.  So my belly is falling more forward, causing a lot of strain on my back.  It is like my belly is 50 lbs itself.  So picking things up and bending over is increasingly uncomfortable and painful.  The scary part is I am the only one doing a 4th pregnancy within 6 years, so I think I am less in shape than the others.  But after this one, whoa, I am done.  I am up for adoption before being pregnant again.

Well love from the dirt!