New Coop Finished/Weird Weather, My Free Skywarn Storm Spotter Class I Took With The National Weather Service

 

New Coop Finished/Weird Weather!

We finally finished the coop! We had a lot of really weird weather in April thru July. We had hot weather, cold weather, Monsoon rain, thunder, lightning and wind. It really held up the coop construction, we just had to wait it out. In April Dave decided to bite the bullet and get started. We set up a temporary coop for a few days for the chickens, which worked out great! They even used the cardboard box I put in there as a nesting box and laid. Dave and I talked a lot ahead of time about what we wanted to do and basically we used the same footprint of the previous coop. Our main thing that we did different was the roof line, and we have the nesting box with inside access only because we like the way it looked. Dave did most of the construction, I had to protect my back. I helped with a few two person holds! Old coop below showing the damage, ready for a tear down. Here are the photos!

 

 

 

 

 

Dave started the tear down, we recycled what we could

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My last picture of Debbie, she lasted 2 years after the Vet said she would, passed peacefully in the house with me, RIP  

 

 

 

 Temporary coop with rain cover

Dave wanted to build the foundation with concrete blocks on the ground but I suggested that it would be really hard to level. So he used recycled bricks that we had with pressure treated lumber on top of that, then leveled. Then he did concrete blocks on top of that. Should last a long time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girls using the nesting cardboard box!

 

 

 

We bought a used window and used storm door for the coop. Dave cut up the old storm door to create a window vent which is great to get cool air in from the north side in the summer. We also have the glass for in the winter when we can close it up to keep it warmer. The storm door also has a panel that goes up and down depending on the weather so it's nice cross ventilation along with the little window, also has a metal vent on the southside-

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to paint the coop the same color as the house, and leave the cedar trim natural for contrast. I basically did all the painting except for the part that I couldn't reach, love the color! 

 

Plastic roof over the plywood, Dave added soffitts

  

I repainted the "Eggs 5 cents" sign that we got from a yard sale years ago

 

We put the wind vane back up, and added some Japanese wind socks as they go with the ones in the garden!

Garden windsocks, love them! 

Bye bye old coop, she lasted 13 years or so mostly from recycled materials-

Interior pictures coming soon...

 

My Free Skywarn Storm Spotter Class I Took With The NWS-

A few months ago I took a free live online class with The National Weather Service. It was fun and very informative! Lots of good info. For more information go here NWS SKYWARN Storm Spotter Program for classes near you. They gave us all a nice packet afterwards with other resources we could use. It's great to be able to know who to contact if you see something important. 

Big Snow!!! Queen's Cake Baking

 

Big Snow!!!-

Well we got the big snow that was predicted! I was watching the weather really closely Friday because we knew it was coming, but wasn't sure exactly about the timing. I follow a local young meteorologist on Facebook (Treasure Valley Weather Headquarters Kody) who is much more on track than the TV weather guys and he really nailed it right down to the hour or so. No snow Friday night on the way home which was really nice, forecast from NWS-

 

 

 

We ran some errands Saturday morning (yesterday) and got home, the snow started in the afternoon. It really picked up after about 4:00 p.m. and then we really got hammered. The high for the day was 17°! I kept the heat lamp on in the coop overnight. I do turn it off during the day even though it's hard wired in. I'm always a little paranoid about a fire. Had about a good five or six inches on the ground when I went to bed, woke up to about 4 or 5 more inches! The top photo of our herb boxes, the solar light are buried completely. There's a video of the snow on my Instagram account, just click on the link! Looks lovely but Dave definitely had a lot to dig out. He shoveled the front sidewalk or driveway and the neighbor sidewalk as well. Lows of 6 degrees tonight, 2 degrees tomorrow night! More snow later in the week.

 

Love our little tree!

 

He created a little walkway for me to get to the coop and he cleared off the sunroom. This is the reason why we always put this up! 

 

 

 

Gives the chickens a lot more dry space when the weather is bad. I've been going out every day and giving them some greens and some wild bird food to give them something to peck at and keep them busy. Deck-

Solar bulbs still showing last night 

 

 

Queen's Cake Baking-

Since I had tomorrow off as a holiday I decided to do some baking this weekend. Since I was still recovering a bit for my surgery I didn't really do any traditional Christmas/holiday baking. I love the recipe for the Williamsburg Queens Cake. I've made it quite a few times before. It has lemon and orange extract with Currants. It takes about an hour and a half to bake but it's worth the wait! You want to let it cool completely before you slice into it and it's even better the next day. Keeps really well! Today or tomorrow I'll be making some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with bittersweet chocolate chips. I did make the cake yesterday with half whole wheat pastry flour to make it a little bit healthier and I'll do the same with the cookies. When it's 17 degrees out it's a good time to bake!

I Spoke Too Soon!

I Spoke Too Soon! 

I went out today to give the hens some dried meal worms and found two eggs! The Spring laying has commenced!!! I guess the extra light and protein helped. Happy to have our own again, this is really part of our Permaculture lifestyle.

Waiting on Eggs, Spring Around The Corner? New Chairs! Happy Valentine's Day

 

Waiting on Eggs- 

My three lovely hens have been on strike since October or so. No eggs, nothing, nada. This is normal in the shorter months of the year and when they are molting. I decided that even though the days are longer to start turning on a regular light in the coop for an extra two/three hours a day. I'm also giving them some extra protein treats in hope that this will stimulate their hormones to start laying eggs. I told them the other day they need to start earning their keep! So far nothing, but I'm sure the eggs will start popping out soon!

 

Miss Sunny
 

 

Spring Around The Corner?

Spring is around the corner, and Dave has started doing a little pruning here and there. Then we got an inch or so of snow last night! Very icy drive to work, but pretty! All roads melted by the afternoon-

 

Our apple tree survived the winter snap we had in October!!! Happy dance!  We've seen a lot of trees that don't drop all their leaves die from this kind of thing. Food prices being what they are we are looking at adding some beds in the front yard for annual vegetables. We wanted to look nice so we will do some kind of integrated landscaping with it. We always try to remember that our neighbors have to look at our yard every day and curb appeal is a great part of being a good neighbor! Nobody wants to look at a junked front yard. I have seen some people who put gardens in their front yard that are pretty untidy and look just messy. We like to have things like natural but organized. Too early to plant the summer vegetables so I may start up my grow lights and start some other cool weather veggies. I bought a small windowsill planter to start some lettuces in...

 

 

 

 

 

Bonnie approved

 New Chairs! 

We decided to bite the bullet and buy two new chairs for our living room. We had had our two other overstuffed chairs for almost 15 years. I had re-stuffed them, added foam and bought new covers. They were just at the point though of really sagging, so it was time to replace. We wanted to buy two Flexsteel chairs but it was just way out of our budget. We love our Flexsteel couch, worht every penny! We opted for a brand that was a little below that but super durable frame, etc. We found a style that we liked, chose the fabric and ordered two of them. They were supposed to take up to about 3 months but only took about 5 weeks! Nice surprise. They're really super supportive and really like the slightly smaller footprint and clean lines. Great reading chairs. In a smaller house you don't want to have too much furniture in your living room. That can make it look even smaller. It's always nice to have some open space for the eye. We opted to spend extra money to have a fabric treatment done. We did that on our couch and it's really paid for itself. Even if you get something a little oily on the fabric a wet clean cold cloth will take it right off. Good investment! We are thinking about having our couch reupholstered at some point to update it a bit. For now we'll leave as is, but we will probably have to get new foam cores in the cushions since they are getting a little squishy. The store we bought the couch at recommended that and that makes sense after 10 years or so.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

 

 

Homesteading Thrifting Finds/Pressure Canning, Veggie Garden Growing! My Eton Mess, RIP Rosie

Homesteading Thrifting Finds/Pressure Canning-

Here's an update of some things that we've been doing here! My thrift store radar was pinging the other day, I went to Goodwill, came around the corner and saw something I have been thinking about buying new. With the price of wheat going up and up and no end in sight in the future, I had thought about buying a bread machine. Since I work full time I thought it would be nice to buy a machine where I could just dump everything in and have a loaf of bread! You can also use it to make a lot of different kinds of doughs for other purposes as well. I really just didn't want to spend the money on it. So I went thrifting and what did I find? A Breadman Ultimate bread making machine! For a whopping $10.00! I love the fact that loaf goes sideways and is not shaped like a square- 

I plugged it in at the thrift store, the power came on, looks like it's been very well taken care of and hardly used. It even came with the owner's manual and the recipe book! I wiped it down, washed it and it almost looks brand new. Will give it a test run this weekend. While I love Dave's Killer Bread, and a few of the other whole grain breads, it's just getting too expensive. I really loaded up on flours the last eight months, as well as wheat berries. So I can definitely make bread a lot cheaper than I can buy it. And fresher too!  I also found a really nice big heavy class Anchor Hocking storage jar. Like new as well! $4.00. 

I did some research on how to dehydrate eggs, since we have our own, and turn into egg powder. Egg powder will take up a lot less space than freezing eggs in our freezer. I'm also trying to move away from relying on our freezer in case we have brown outs/blackouts in the next 6 months and ongoing. After doing research I realized that I could use my existing dehydrator I just needed to buy some food grade silicone liner trays. I found a good deal on Amazon, $14.00 for four, and they fit perfect! I may also make some fruit leathers for the grandkids- 

Basically you do about 8 to 10 eggs at a time, blended, and dehydrate at 140° until completely dry. I think I read that can take about 10 to 12 hours or more. I will be doing that shortly since we have almost six dozen eggs! Will fire it up this weekend and post results. 

I've been doing some research for a while and decided to start doing pressure canning. For a long time there was a lot in the media about NOT being able to use a glass top stove. After I did a lot of research I realized that you can, however you have to make sure about the weight, the size of the burner, and the canner. After doing research I decided to buy a Presto 16 quart pressure canner. It will be a good smaller size for us. I did research on my stove top and how big the canner would be. I was really excited to see that the thick round part of the canner bottom fits exactly my large burner, perfect-

This was something that I saw lots of places is really mandatory. There's also weight limit on most glass top stove of about 50 lbs so I didn't want to get a huge canner. I was really excited when it arrived it fits perfect! I will not be dragging across the glass either, and was advised to only have the one pot on the stove at a time. Best be careful! Looking forward to canning meat, beans, soups and veggies! Will post more of that over time. 

Veggie Garden Growing!

After all the crazy weather we finally got our vegetable garden planted and cleared off our deck! There were so many pots and plants on the deck for so many weeks I couldn't even see what the deck look like underneath it all! 4th of July weekend we made a push on Sunday and Dave and I laid out all the veggies and strawberries. He planted all of that while I was able to plant up all the herbs, flowers and some of the perennials. I can finally see my deck again! 

Sorry about that thumb

We have a really nice mix of vegetables this year and we're very fortunate found some really good deals. With my job change and other craziness I was never able to start any seeds in our grow light plant rack. We have planted several kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of cucumbers, collard greens, curly kale , three or four kinds of peppers, some small refrigerator size watermelon, yellow squash, and something else I'm probably forgetting! 

Mound garden this year, gorgeous from all the rain! 

flowers near the veggie gate

lots of veggies! 

New strawberry row, will add more next year

Luna peeking out behind the gate

Lots of thornless blackberries! 

Lavender to harvest, I leave 30% or more for the bees

White lavender

Small watermelon, my 1st!

We mulched everything really well and my herbs really took off in this hot weather! Now we're finally into the part of just watering and keeping an eye on everything. We're finally in the mid-90s and this will probably be the norm for a while. I think the rain is finally over! Need to mulch the strawberries a lot more, taking a beating in the heat! 

My Eton Mess-

I read about a traditional Eton Mess, a British dessert and decided to try it! Jamie Oliver did something pretty similar. Eton Mess is a traditional British summertime dessert of gooey meringue, sweet strawberries and rich cream in a generous sticky mess. Here's what I did- crushed about 3/4 cup fresh strawberries and 1/2 cup fresh blueberries. I used a potato masher, added a few Tbl of sugar and left on the counter to get the juices going. I bought some Trader Joe's meringue cookies (not baking a huge one for two people) then whipped some heavy whipping cream. I used our medium drinking glasses. I started with the slushy juicy berries, then add the cookies (cut in 1/2), then the whipping cream. Keep layering. Last fresh plain berries on top, added a cookie on top. That's it! I loved it!!! 

RIP Rosie-

Rosie was our wonderful Rhode Island Red hen that we had for about almost 10 years. She'd been through her trials and tribulations over the years. Several months ago she started limping really badly and had to use one of her wings on one side to be able to walk. She kept doing pretty well was eating, drinking and hanging out with the rest of the flock. I couldn't really tell what had happened. I did read chickens can have strokes, maybe that was it? I examined her but couldn't figure anything out. Over time she started eating less and less and resting more. I couldn't bring myself to euthanize her because I'd had her for so long. So I kept her comfortable. I made sure she always got treats 2xs a day, water, was clean and would take her from the nesting box at night where she slept, down into the main part of the garden. Depending on the weather would be in, or out, of the coop. She enjoyed being with her pals. Finally last week I could tell she was ready to go. I brought her in, she sat next to me in a nice laundry basket on a big fluffy towel-

It was nice and cool. She only lasted about an hour after I brought her in. She had a really good life, she ate lots of bugs and weeds and laid wonderful eggs. I like to think that she's on the other side now with her chicken friends who preceded her. We'll miss you Rosie! She was a real trooper and the mother/protector of her flock. She had quite the personality! RIP my sweet girl. Last summer with her flock-