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.

My Favorites: Cloth Diaper Addiction

I'm over at Cloth Diaper Addiction today sharing about my (current) favorite diapers and accessories.

Every time I get the chance to chat with another cloth diaper mama one question is sure to come up: "So, what's your favorite?" It's simultaneously the best and the worst question to have to answer. It is so hard to pin down a favorite when there are so many fantastic options out there. On the other hand, the great thing about talking favorites with another cloth diaper mama is that you're bound to hear about some awesome new diapers that you just have to try! So without further ado, here are my (current) favorites.

Click here to read the rest and find out what diapers I reach for first these days!

Pantry Challenge!

The Pantry Challenge is hosted by Good (Cheap) Eats a couple times a year. The goal is to "eat down your pantry" to use up forgotten ingredients, rotate your stock, and reduce grocery costs for a month.

I read about the Pantry Challenge a couple days into the month, but was already unintentionally meal planning out of the pantry so it was easy to jump right in! I had already started with some "leftover" meals from my Christmas week meal plan, so meal planning last week was fairly easy. We eat light breakfasts and for lunches we mainly do leftovers, so dinner has been my primary "eat down the pantry" focus. Before I started meal planning, however, I took an inventory of my pantry, fridge, and two freezers to see what we need to be using up during this challenge.

Some items in my freezer were no surprise at all. Ben still has a mallard in there waiting to go to the taxidermist. There was a bag of Very Old fish that got thrown in the trash finally. There are a lot of green beans from our garden. (Does anyone have clever ways of preparing green beans? I've run out of ideas.) And then there were a few thing in there that I didn't expect, like the fact that we have four (yes FOUR!) turkeys in our freezer! I knew we had three, but the fourth has magically appeared out of thin air. So we will be roasting a few birds this month, to say the least. Then there was a bag of... something. Ham, maybe? It's on the list as Mystery Meat, a tribute to the days before I started labeling my frozen goods. Suffice to say, our freezer is full and we may even carry the Pantry Challenge over into February just for good measure.

So far we've had homemade barbeque chicken pizza with cheese sticks, Rustic Chickpea Stew with brown rice, mango curry chicken salad, ham sandwiches on homemade wheat bread, and Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast. Our grocery bill for the last two weeks was about half of what it normally is, so our Pantry Challenge is working great so far!

The Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast turned out fantastic! I decided to make it after noticing that I had cream cheese in the fridge, and strawberries and a loaf of sweet currant bread in the freezer. I pulled out an old index card recipe and tweaked it to use what I had around. Here's what I came up with!

Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast

about one loaf firm bread, cut into 1 in pieces (I used currant bread and some homemade whole wheat bread)
8 oz cream cheese, cubed
12 oz strawberries, quartered

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

8 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla or almond extract

Butter a 9x13 inch pan and spread about half of the bread pieces on the bottom. Distribute the cream cheese evenly over the bread and layer the strawberries on top. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the berries and then add the remaining bread as the top layer. Mix together eggs, milk, syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla and pour over bread. Refrigerate, covered, for at least an hour or overnight. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Serve with syrup and whip cream if desired.

All About Me: Cloth Diaper Addiction!

I'm so excited to be a new contributing writer at Cloth Diaper Addiction! I have followed their blog for quite a while now and have loved all the great information they have and the diaper reviews they do.

I'm over there today introducing myself as a new contributor. Check out my All About Me post here!

One Word 2013: Wholly

I first read about One Word at the beginning of 2012 and tucked it in the back of my mind as something to think about doing for 2013. As the new year approached this winter I started seeing One Word mentions everywhere, and I'm so grateful for the reminders from all corners of the blogosphere! I started asking God what my word should be during the Christmas season, and the one He brought me to kind of surprised me. I think that it's going to be just what I need for this year, though!

When I first thought about the word Wholly, the words entirely and fully came to mind. I often struggle to be entirely and fully present with where I am and what I'm doing. It's easy to dwell on the past or future and completely forget to be in the present. As I looked up other definitions for Wholly I found that it has a much deeper meaning than I realized, and really will be a good challenge to grow this year. Some of the other definitions I found are: entirely, the whole amount, involving all, complete, undivided, not broken. Not only that, but the word Wholly is used in the Bible to describe sacrifices to God and those who love Him being wholly devoted to Him. 

So I feel like God is calling me to be whole this year: wholly present with my family, putting my whole self into the things He is calling me to, and following His leading to become a more whole, complete person. Whether it's being a wife and mama, tending a garden, raising chickens, menu planning, budgeting wisely, or seeking God, I'm feeling called to be dedicated wholly to whatever I set my hands to. 

A Very Merry Christmas

My heirloom Christmas Cactus

I found it hard to get excited about Christmas the first few years Ben and I were married. Three extended families and both immediate families all within 30 minutes, reduced the holiday to a chaotic scheduling nightmare. We were hardly at our own home at all, so decorating seemed just silly, and our tree sat neglected and dying. Last Christmas we didn't get a tree at all because it just seemed like a waste of time and energy since I was 8 months pregnant and we were trying to prep the house for a baby.

This year was so different! We decided that our Christmas goal needed to be to keep the busyness to a minimum, so we approached the holiday with a willingness to say no if need be. Most of the extended family events got scheduled in a very spread out fashion, so the pace of everything was slower than years past. For Christmas day we decided that Christmas morning was going to be just ours. No running around to our families' houses first thing in the morning for us, thank you very much! We went out to Ben's folks house for a short brunch and presents, and then came back to our place and had my family over for the evening. Doing Christmas that way felt so much more relaxed and peaceful, and I was so thankful that it worked out that way.

There is just something about tinies and Christmas that brings back all the magic of the season. Having Ava with us this year has refreshed the excitement of Christmas for me, even though she is too little to remember it. I've been happily basking in the glow of our homey Christmas tree this week, just feeling thankful for her and so peaceful and happy about our little family. We had a very merry Christmas indeed!

There's just something so precious about flannel nighties...

An honest struggle and pushing the reset button.

I haven't used this space in quite a while now. It's been a mental struggle this summer to figure out whether I want to blog or not, and if so what the purpose of my blog will be? Part of the problem has been simply all the wonderful blogs I follow already. Sometimes I read their content and it resonates deep within me, leaving me feeling like I could never put my thoughts into words as beautifully as they do anyway, so what's the point? Other times the blogs I read leave my head full of so much learning and thought that I wonder if I can even come up with anything original anymore. The blogs I read each have their own unique voice. Some are beautiful storytellers who use lush poetry to bring me to tears; others research deeply and matter of factly write to inform and bring awareness; others have a mix of styles, but all have touched me and helped me grow into who I am today. So really the struggle for me this summer has been the question of what is my voice in this community? Do I have anything to offer here? What do I hope to gain from this space?

Finding a "voice" to write from sounds easy but I feel like for an introvert it becomes a more difficult task. It's finding that balance between being genuine and over-sharing. It's saying no to the temptation to be a chameleon and sound like someone else just to fit in. A lot of my mental struggle with this place has been just debating with myself... who do I sound like on my blog? How do I make sure that I am just being myself here? It actually has reminded me a lot of my struggle in college to find myself and stop making myself into the person I thought people wanted to be friends with. Once I settled into the realization that it was ok for me to be ME, I felt such freedom and that was when the true friendships deepened.

The other question I have been asking is what can I offer here? Obviously the point of a blog is that someone reads it. What insights, learning, or stories can I or should I share here? I've had so many ideas for a "theme" or general tone for this blog, but I have realized that I just can't pin it down that narrowly. I want to write about life, family, natural living, simple living, organizing, gardening... I don't want it to become a one-topic space. I'm not going to be strictly a how-to blog, or a garden blog, or a cloth diaper blog, or a parenting blog, though I will certainly write about those things. This blog is just going to be about life -  the people I love and the things I enjoy.

So what do I want from this space? I need a space to think out loud, clear my head, organize my thoughts. I'm naturally introverted, so most often there are a myriad thoughts spinning around in my head that go unsaid and unwritten. I've been feeling lately like it would be healthy for me to take the time to think out loud here and open up a little; airing out some of the deeper ideas I have and being brave enough to say them out loud is not a strong suit of mine and would be good for me to develop. The other thing I want from this blog is that little extra push of accountability; that extra little incentive to follow through on my interests and passions, instead of being consumed with a new idea only to move on a few weeks later with no follow through.

So I'm going to just go with the flow and just be myself. I'm going to write about what I love, and use this place to push myself to grow, learn, and get things done.