Sometimes life changes the stories you wanted to tell

So five days in I bailed on 31 Days of Stories. Why? Well when the toddler decides to make every. single. bedtime. an epic battle, there is just not much energy left for storytelling. I'm also still striving to improve at living wholly this year and blogging just became another thing keeping me from that for a while.

So I keep plugging along, good days and bad, keeping things afloat here on our little mini homestead. These days it's mostly de-icing waterers and refilling feeders, although there are still some apples and brussels sprouts from the garden that I need to get into the freezer.

We had a totally out of the ordinary day on Thursday, however, when our goat Selah had her kids! Ben was able to get home from work to take care of Ava and I hung out in the barn with Selah as a full time goat midwife for several hours. She ended up having boy/girl twins and the births were textbook: perfect for a first time goat midwife! I've got to say... baby goats are quite possibly one of the cutest things on earth. The only hard part now is making sure not to get too attached to the little boy since he will be for sale next spring. The girl we will keep to raise up to be a milker though, so I've been brainstorming cute names for her!

Mere minutes after birth: left is the boy, right is the girl.

Building a Log Chicken Coop: a story in pictures

It was Ben who had the genius idea of building a log chicken coop. I admit, I was a little skeptical, but only because I had never seen any chicken coops like it before. 

We got a free (for the price of Ben's time and energy clearing the trees out of his Grandpa's property) load of pine logs to use for the coop.

On a warm Saturday in March, we hosted a barn raising. I contributed the world's best pork roast feast and a case of beer to the event as payment for our friends' time and efforts.

With one day of work done, the barn was about halfway built, and the door was framed in.

Ava sat and assisted with picking bark off of the logs.

Another day and more friends' help later, all the logs were in place and the barn just needed a roof.

The long chainsaw cut down each side to even the logs out for the roof beams was one of the most tedious parts, and made me the most nervous.

After the roof was installed, Ben framed out half of the barn and added a door, two windows, nesting boxes, roosts, and a nice floor to keep the chickens up out of the mud. We had such a wet spring that the ground in front of and inside the door was just churned into a mud pit, so we had to add some pallets and boards to walk on.

I think the finished coop looks so fantastic. I am so proud of all of Ben's hard work that he put into it!

Inside the chickens' pen we added two log roosts, though they are being stubborn about using them right now. You can see a rope stretched across the ceiling: that is Ben's genius pulley system for the trap door that leads to their run. All I have to do to let them out is pull the handle on the outside of the coop and hook it onto its support to leave the door open for the day.

Some of the chickens use the roosts. Others have started preferring the nesting boxes! Oops.

I can't wait until these nesting boxes are full of eggs each morning!

The run for the chickens is 20'x20' to allow as much room as possible. We can't really free range them too much. If we let them run inside our picket fence then we have issues with our dogs, and if we let them run outside our picket fence we risk issues with our neighbors.

They are very happy in their log home though. They love watching me garden and they get so excited when I bring them table scraps.

This is the lovely view when you walk toward the back of our property. Our big raised bed garden is being planted this week, our chickens are happy in their run, and I can't wait to start harvesting fresh veggies, fruits, and eggs!

Spring Time and Chicken Math

There are crocuses blooming outside! I don't think there is anything that says 'Spring' to me quite like crocuses. Seeing those tiny little flowers gets me in the mood to clean all the things and plan my garden.

You know what else says 'Spring?' Chicks. Which brings me to Chicken Math. What is Chicken Math, you ask? Allow me to share an example.

So initially Ben and I were going to get six to eight laying hens and a few meat birds. We looked up some mail order hatcheries and discovered Minimums. You see, in order for your mail order chicks to stay alive, they need to be shipped with at least 25 in the box. After reconfiguring our desired number of birds, we decided to order 15 laying hens and 10 meat birds. Easy, right? Nope. I then realized that the meat birds would be ready for harvesting around 6-8 weeks old which would have been... well, now actually. We decided that we didn't really want to be harvesting birds right away in March, so we scratched the meat birds off the list and decided to just get 25 layers. After all, what are ten more going to hurt?

We found a hatchery locally where we could purchase less than 25 for a pick up order, but due to quantity discounts the Hatchery Choice assortment with 25 chicks was the same price as choosing 15 individual chicks. So we got our assortment of 25 adorable chicks and I was hooked! I got all our breeds figured out from our mystery assortment and it turned out that they were all brown egg layers. That's good, right? Not when I was hoping for Easter Eggers, the breed that lays blue or green eggs.

I decided I needed some Easter Eggers, and then I found out about Marans. French Copper Marans, to be precise. They lay a gorgeous dark chocolate brown egg. It literally looks like a real chocolate egg. I decided to get two Easter Eggers and two Marans. But.... TSC has a six chick minimum! So I got six Easter Eggers. Then I found out that the Marans were straight run, meaning they are not sexed. So obviously if I want two hens I need to buy more chicks to help my odds. So I have four Marans now.

Have you kept up with the math here? So via chicken math we have:
8 chicks + 7 meats = 25 chicks
2 EE chicks + 2 Maran chicks = 10 chicks
Total chicks in my basement brooder = 35

The really great part about Chicken Math though, is that certain types of chickens don't really count toward the total. Roosters, for instance. Three of my Marans are roosters and probably two of the Easter Eggers are as well.

35 chicks - 5 roosters = 30 chicks

Also, any hens that aren't laying don't count, and young chicks don't count.

30 chicks - 30 chicks not yet laying = 0

So really, I don't have any chickens. Hmmm, maybe I need to go to TSC now.

Garden Fresh Pasta Sauce

A quick recipe for your enjoyment. Ben and I improvised this as we cooked and ended up with a fabulous final product. This is a great easy way to use up some of the surplus of tomatoes that you may have this summer! The measurements I have included are approximate since we were tossing things in as we went. Just adjust to the taste and texture you like.

2-3 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 T Red Wine Vinegar
1 T Butter
2 cloves Garlic, minced
2 - 4 cups baby bella mushrooms, sliced thick (amount used depends on how much you like mushrooms!)
6-8 large tomatoes or 10-14 small tomatoes, chunked
1 small handful fresh basil, chopped
1 small red chili, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 - 2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 - 2 tsp dried marjoram (sub in fresh if you have it!)
1 8oz can tomato paste

In a large skillet or sauce pan heat up a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add red wine vinegar, butter, and minced garlic.
Toss in baby bella mushrooms. Add more EVOO if needed. Saute on high for a few minutes until they show some color and soften a bit.
Add in tomatoes, making sure to include juices. We chunked our tomatoes right over the pan so as to keep all those juices in the sauce.
Add basil, red chili, marjoram, red pepper, salt and pepper. Gently boil at med-high heat 5 - 10 minutes until the juices start to concentrate.
Add can of tomato paste to thicken sauce. Simmer for another few minutes to bring the sauce together and thicken to desired consistency. Check spices and add more as desired.
Serve over al dente spaghetti or other pasta of choice.

Let the eating begin!

Our garden is just starting to let us in on its bounty. Our pepper plants are struggling a little, but everything else is flourishing. Note for next year... less is more. I don't think we realized how much a single plan can produce when planted in good soil!

So far the harvest has been: 2 yellow squash, 6 zucchini, 4 pickling cucumbers, 1 salad cucumber, 2 grape tomatoes and 2 yellow cherry tomatoes. No, the grape and cherry tomatoes did not make it inside the house! They were happily consumed in the garden while searching for zucchini in the other bed.

I found two quick refrigerator pickle recipes to use up my cukes, and I must say they turned out delish!

The first recipe I made comes from Aarti Sequeira, last season's Food Netword Star winner. This was my favorite of the two pickle recipes... slightly sweeter, and the cilantro with the salad cuke is so perfect and summery! The only modification to Aarti's recipe that I made was that I substituted white wine vinegar for rice vinegar. Turned out great even with a substitution.

The other recipe I used was actually a Rachael Ray dill pickle recipe. While I am definitely not a Rachael Ray fan, this recipe was easy and really good. It has a good mix of spices and herbs with the white vinegar, and the addition of garlic added really good flavor. The longer these sit in the fridge, the better they taste, too!

From the ground up...

We tried to garden last year... tried and (mostly) failed. The soil at our new house is solid clay so aside from grass and weeds things don't grow well here. We did have some very successful green pepper plants though, and we were motivated to try harder this year. I decided to take up blogging again to journal about our garden adventures and our journey toward a simpler life.

Since the clay wasn't friendly toward the plants we tried to grow in it last year, we decided to cart in some better soil and build a better growing environment from the ground up. Over a month ago Ben and I built ten garden boxes to hold the soil we were planning on getting. Our boxes are just build out of pine 2"x6" boards with 2"x4" pieces as the connecting supports. We built two 30'x2' boxes, two 4'x8' boxes, and six 4'x12' boxes and laid them out in their places.

Fast forward through many rainy weekends until we finally had a dry(ish) day to have soil delivered last week. Of course the day we were going to borrow a tractor to distribute our dirt to our boxes it started raining for two days. Thankfully by Saturday of Memorial Day weekend the rain had cleared up. Saturday and Sunday were spent hauling and spreading dirt, picking up more dirt at the distributor, hauling and spreading more dirt, and finally hauling and spreading dirt in a thunderstorm! Yes, that's right... it started storming mid-task Sunday afternoon, so we decided to buck up and finish the job. Finishing the soil left us all day Monday to spread landscaping fabric down between all the boxes and get our load of pea gravel spread on the paths. Once done with the boxes and paths, we were finally able to get our seedlings and seeds in the ground!

Lest you think that this all went smoothly, rest assured that box gardens are a ridiculous amount of work and we had plenty of issues along the way. The tractor got stuck in the soggy clay a few times, and once got stuck for quite a while. The remaining grass back there will take a long time to come back and some of the tractor tire ruts are there for good. I already mentioned the pouring rain that we spread soil during, but then on Monday the temperature hit at least 85 with full sun, giving us some fantastic sunburns. Not to mention the fact that we initially tried to get these gardens in about a month ago!

After all of that, I'm just thankful that the gardens are planted. If we get even half of what we planted to produce, then we'll be eating like kings all summer! We'll have: seven varieties of tomatoes; summer squash and zucchini; strawberries; three types of beans; three varieties of peas; several kinds of lettuces and spinach; radishes; celery; six kinds of peppers; six kinds of winter squash; potatoes; three kinds of onions; cucumbers for eating and pickling; carrots and parsnips; rutabagas and turnips; and that's not counting the herbs in my deck boxes and herb garden! We should be stocked on herbs: basil, cilantro, oregano, thyme, marjoram, dill, sage, rosemary, lavender, beebalm, mint, parsley, chives, and chamomile.

I'm looking forward to finding ways to use and preserve our harvest this summer!