Independence Days Challenge- Covid Edition

Independence Days Challenge- Covid Edition-
I thought I'd do some updating of various projects and this list is a good way to organize things! Join in, post on your blog if you like! FYI I didn't invent this list, several other bloggers were doing this for quite a while over the years. Here's the recent Independence Days Challenge- Covid Edition... 

1. Plant Something- We just planted a row of Blue Lake bush green beans, a patch of small mixed pumpkins and several kinds of Italian "frying" peppers on the south side of the house. Used to be a spot for the old shed we tore down. I finally found some of the peppers at a local greenhouse, happy dance! The varieties we planted are Marconi, Giant Marconi and Jimmy Nardello.  The peppers are long, sweet. They're great stuffed, topped with marinara sauce, or add to pasta sauce and freezes well. Great addition to the garden-

Our poor tomatoes have finally perked up with the hotter weather.  I saw that Seed Savers Exchange had free shipping so I bought some Radio Calendula seeds to plant, looks like this, love the spikes! I planted a whole big flower pot full! 

Photo from Seedsavers.org

I finally planted my new flower box Dave built with Basil and some local Calendula-

2. Harvest Something- Eggs, Basil, Chives. Too early for summer veggies yet. 

3. Preserve/Store Something- Two batches of fermented veggies, Sauerkraut and Carrots w/ Ginger and garlic. Froze some meats. I'm going to do an inventory of the freezer soon. I may can some of our frozen apples. 

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep- Bought some seeds with free shipping from Seedsavers.org for next year. Bought some Brats from Costco to freeze, got a great coupon deal for canned cat food. Anya barfs if she eats dry, so the Vet said to switch. We did, little vomiting and she lost weight, which was good! The Vet said dry food has way too many carbs, no wonder. She's also more active!

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe- Ditto fermented goods. Eating some meals from freezer foods. 

6. Build Community Food Systems- Nothing at this time. Hope to sell extra eggs at some point in the late fall/winter, when the new girls start laying. Five chickens in production, look out!!!

7. Recycle/Re-Use- Dave built a cedar planting box from an old planter my daughter was going to throw away. I told how how big big and he built it! All free.  We gave away a tote of leftover river rock from the path prep thru Free Craigslist. The woman is using as border for a community garden! Happy to help with that! 

Dave brought home two boxes from work for the chicks. I start the first week with a laundry basket, then move to a larger box. Next I combine two boxes for a larger space. They'll be outside soon, hopefully in a few weeks, slowly integrating to the flock. Feathering out and weather are the factors.  The shredded bark that was dumped here with our purchased gravel we re-used in the garden for mulch, mostly gravel free. 

8. Skill Up- Still working on the Retrosuburbia book, love it! Learning lots of Australian slang! 

Dave and I did research, he got our new walkway in, looks and works great! 

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something- Our flock! We bought our three new chicks, all growing well! 

From the left- Debbie, Sunny and Luna 

I bought a new curtain rod online, the finial was broken off on arrival. Since it was a clean break I decided to glue it back together. Will never show, will touch up if needed-

It's a fun, shabby chic distressed finish-

It's going to replace the too-small rod, isn't wide enough for the new curtains-

My work from home "office"

That gave me the idea to paint an existing rod in our main bedroom. It was black, which was fine. Later I added sheers and a second rod, which is white. I'll take it down and paint it white to match-

Our bedroom is a light gray with white trim, so it will match better. I have tons of paint! No cost update-

The Second Hawk Attack Was The Last One

The Second Hawk Attack Was The Last One-

I wrote about the first time Annie, my white hen, was attacked by a hawk here and survived Hawk Attack . The second time she wasn't so lucky. I looked out yesterday morning and saw a big blob of something white on the ground, thought it was a row cover that had blown off in the wind from my herb box. I put on my glasses and realized it was my hen. I went flying out of the house to find my poor honey almost decapitated and dead. I was so upset I didn't know quite what to do, since I had to go to work. I decided to simply remove her from the area and set her aside. She was a really sweet pea with a real curious personality. When I came home from work I had more of a chance to look at her, look at the scene and try to figure out what happened. I was pretty convinced it was a hawk attack and I still am. I found a little bit of blood on the top of both sides of the gate going into the garden-

Her neck was broken so hopefully she died fast when the hawk struck. Her body was outside the gate in the big pile of feathers. One breast was completely removed and eaten. Looking back I think she may have been attacked around dusk the night before, but it's hard to tell it might have been early in the morning. She was out the day before after work, when I collected the eggs and gave them a snack. I looked up and read that hawks to attack really early in the morning/late in the day near dusk. Last night I decided to close the coop door and only let the other 3 out after there was more daylight in the sky. It's hard when you have a small flock to lose one after you have raised them from a 1 or 2 day-old chicks. You really get to know their personalities. So rest in peace Annie,  you survived one but unfortunately not the second one. So sad.... 

Annie

We Lost Pru

Pru on the Left

We Lost Pru-
I had a pretty stressful week this week going back to work full-time after my hand surgery but I survived. It's frustrating mousing on the computer with your left hand when you're a righty! I had kind of a weird experience leaving my work building today which I won't get into here, but pretty odd. I went out to dinner by myself since Dave had to work late, really relaxed and had a nice meal.  I went home and was giving Anya the cat some love and looked out the back yard window. My black hen was in the yard laying down. Sometimes they take dust baths and kind of doze off or just hang out. From what I could see she was not moving at all, not a good sign. I hustled out and my beautiful Pru was cold and very dead. She was quite a bit bigger than in the photo above, pretty well full grown and a beautiful black Australorp. The only thing I could see was that her neck appeared to be broken, and she had a pretty major wound on her side. I suspect it was a hawk attack. That's kind of odd if it was a hawk, that it didn't eat more? I'm not sure if there's a possibility that the four hens drove off a hawk or maybe it was an immature hawk? I don't know, which is a little frustrating but regardless we lost her. One less hen but what can you do? Sigh...

Natural Pain Remedies For Injured Chickens, 'Prepper's Survival Retreats' Book Giveaway!

Natural Pain Remedies For Injured Chickens-
Poor Gwynne, she gets picked on, gets sick, and now appears to have either a fractured pelvis or hip issue. This week I saw her in the garden run limping terribly. I picked her up and checked her. No wounds that I could see, bleeding, etc. Dave said a night or so ago he saw her fall off the coop perch, probably pushed off by another hen.  I left her outside for another day, then realized how much pain she was in. She would walk around a little, then collapse on the cold, damp ground. With 32 in the forecast I brought her in. She was hungry and thirsty. I think she hadn't been going in the coop much to eat or drink. She warmed up and rested in the kitchen chicken hospital, large laundry basket-

She can stand up pretty comfortably but starts breathing hard when she sits down. I think she may have a fractured hip or pelvis? Best guess. After doing some research I bought some Boiron Arnica pellets-

                                                               

Very small-

 After doing some research it appeared I could give her a "dose", so I decided to just start with one pellet. I also put her in a larger space to observe, a tarp under our chick outdoor enclosure (thrifted) in the kitchen-

I dosed her twice with no seeming effect. She appears to be really hurting laying down, breathing hard. More comfortable standing up. So I mashed up a full dose of 5 pellets into applesauce, but she wouldn't eat it. I use the small amount of water in a cup and put in 10 pellets, a double dose. After dissolved I added a pinch of sugar and loaded that into a small pet's oral syringe. Dave had to hold her and I gave her 1 dose. Waiting to see how it goes, time will tell. I didn't see much effect, so gave  her a 2nd dose tonight. Here are some good resources to start with if interested in more chicken treatment ideas-   Arnica and Calendula For Poultry    Pain Meds for Chickens  Petremedycharts.com
Chat.allotment-garden.org  If you have any other suggestions, please post a comment! Sadly can't do a Vet visit.

Prepper's Survival Retreats Book Giveaway-
When I was approached by Molly at Ulysses's Press to review a book I was excited! What kind of info would it have? The title certainly sounded interesting. She sent me a copy and it's really pretty fascinating! One of the things I've learned about the Depression in the last century the people survived reasonably comfortably because they were prepared and have a certain skill set. They also had a home/property that was set up to grow, preserve foods and be more self-sufficient. I don't know, however, if those people were also concerned about security issues? I gave the book a look , lots of great info, and here are the chapter titles, in order-

A brief history of collapse, What do you need to survive, The big questions, Purchasing an existing home, Can you make it here? Building or renovating your survival retreat, Survival groups and your new retreat relocation, Whittling down a short list of properties. 

There are some graphics and photos scattered throughout the book and lots of interesting questions like- timing is everything, how soon do you want to make this happen? So if you're interested in winning this book all you need to do is leave a comment below and follow me on Facebook. It's that simple! I will do the drawing at the end of this next week, post the winner and then ask you to email me your shipping info. I've already seen lots of other great reviews, what I've seen so far I really like, is very relevant and very practical.

Meaty Pasta Sauce, DIY Flagstone Pond Edging, Read Your Pet Food Labels, Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Meaty Pasta Sauce W/ Home Grown Tomatoes-
A week or two ago I was taking the last of my frozen peaches out of the freezer I realized I had some homegrown tomatoes left! I didn't know that! When I froze our organic tomatoes I also added some chopped red and green Italian peppers-

That was great since I wanted to do another batch of a very meaty pasta sauce for multiple dinners. Yesterday I thawed them, drained them (tons of juice!) and started sauteing a couple of tubes of New York-style Italian sausage. To that I added a chopped onion, several cloves of fresh garlic, herbs and the tomatoes. I also added a couple large cans of tomato sauce since I needed something with more thick liquid with all of that meat. I cooked that down for several hours and it came out great! Since I didn't completely crush the meat there were mini meatballs mixed in! I served on top of rigatoni pasta with some fresh basil topped with some shredded fresh cheese. I haven't some french bread and salad and it was awesome! After a very rainy day it was nice to have a nice, hot , hearty meal.

I also took down my Easter decor and left up my Spring things-

Daffodils already mean Spring!

More rain this afternoon-

DIY Flagstone Pond Edging-
For several years we have thought about putting a new edging around our little recycled pond that we had built in the backyard. We got the pond liner at a yard sale really cheap, bought a new pump and a few different nozzles at a thrift store. We used to river rock that we had scavenged originally but I really like the look of the flat flagstone. One of the things about river stone is that a didn't really cover the black plastic edging of the pond, sort of defeating the purpose of having it look natural.  One of the other problems with River Rock what it was continually fall into the pond,  fall backwards into the shrubs, and was basically unstable-

 I'd seen tons of photo online with flagstone edging where it covers the plastic so all you see is a stone and the water. Dave and I went to Home Depot yesterday and surprisingly they didn't have any in stock. Luckily there was a Lowe's not too far from here so we drove there. It is been really windy all day, had rain in the morning, so I check the weather before we left. I took my rain jacket and told Dave he should probably take his, which he didn't. It started sprinkling while we were at Home Depot and turned into a torrential downpour going to Lowe's. Thunder and lighting oh my! It was an absolute monster storm the whole time we were there but we did find some Flagstone. Nice sized pieces for about $8 each- Natural Patio Stone. We bought 12 pieces, for about $100.00.  David had measured about how many square feet we would need-

And big bags of potting soil, $2.00 each!

By the time we left we were both pretty soaked, but that was okay. Dave wore a hoodie, was soaked and I was soaked from the knees down to my socks. We did have to change clothes, but the afternoon turned out to be fairly dry. I found a video on YouTube that had real simple and easy directions about how to edge the flagstone as needed-

He removed the river stone first and leveled the area little bit-

He started doing a dry lay out of the stone. The dry layout lets you see where the potential pieces should go and what you might need to adjust-

Lots of square corners

Many of the pieces were square/rectangular, and we wanted to soften those up a bit, so the video was perfect. Dave set up a little work area and went to work-

Bucket to catch the odd pieces brilliant!

He took his hammer to most of the edges to curve a little bit and fit them. All in all the whole project took about 3 hours of labor, but it looks awesome! 

Thanks Dave!

The stone will last for years and years, and are a great investment. We store leftover river stone for other projects in the yard, and had a little bit of extra flagstone that we will use somewhere else-

I think it's always better to have a little bit left over that's running out. It will look even better when we add the water lettuce plants and we bark dust!

Read Your Pet Food Labels-

For a while on your wonderful cat Anya had had some stomach problems, and had gone to the vet a few times. For a variety reasons I decided to take a look at what the ingredients of the Science Diet cat food that she had been on. It's advertised veterinarians recommend this diet most! I was kind of surprised when I started really looking at the ingredients how many fillers there were in the food-

I want around Pet Smart where we buy our food with my cell phone and took a few photos of the ingredients to compare. I was also looking at the prices and if it was a standard food that they usually carried. I was kind of surprised to see that Blue Buffalo, a food that advertises itself as very healthy, was actually a bit cheaper than what I had been buying. A lot less fillers, also included vegetables, other nutrients, and other ingredients that were pretty healthy-

Short of making your own pet food from scratch it can be challenging to find an affordable pet food that's healthy. And affordable can be a relative term. So I decided to post the two pictures of the ingredient labels just as a comparison. Whenever you see anything that says pulp that is filler, anything that basically is some kind of a ground up ingredients is usually junk. I switched to Blue Buffalo and she seemed to really like it and so far her stomach is fine, so time will tell. Just a reminder to read the labels since you may be able to get something that's healthier that's actually cheaper!

                                                               Click here for more info

Strawberry/Rhubarb Crumble-

With our rhubarb coming up in the garden it reminded me that I have some in our freezer. I bought some strawberries and decided to make a strawberry rhubarb crumble. It's one of our favorite spring desserts because it's sweet and tart and super healthy. I decided to try this recipe since I've had tried a few others. With this I did not use the vanilla pod and used walnuts. Yummy on a cool Spring day since the temperature dropped 10 degrees. Try it! Epicurious.com Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Re-Webbing a Vintage Lawn Chair, Mini Road Trip, Flystrike A Chicken Killer

Renewed!!!

Re-Webbing a Vintage Lawn Chair-

This was such an inexpensive update! I found this aluminum lawn chair back in the 80's abandoned under my apartment deck. Covered with cobwebs, ripped webbing and filthy I could see the potential! I bought some blue webbing and replaced it and had a great chair. Last year the webbing finally gave out. I stored it and brought it out this month. I found new blue and green replacement webbing online on eBay for $15.00 and Dave decided to re-do it for me. Thanks Hon! Simply remove the old webbing with a screw driver and don't lose the screws! Ours were intact, so we reused them. You carefully measure the webbing for each row (do one direction at a time) and cut the ends straight. Use a very sharp pair of scissors! You then fold the webbing into a V and screw the screw into the webbing and the holes, tighten and move on! Easy peasy. I think we're good for another 30 years! 

Old webbing coming off

Corners of new webbing screwed in.

Mini Road Trip-

We've been behind in planting our veggie garden. Between the baby shower and painting the house it was delayed. We did plant some herbs and kale last weekend though! This weekend was supposed to be for planting everything else, but nature had other plans. Rain. All. Weekend. So we decided with the 3 day weekend next weekend we'd wait. What to do? Road trip for the day to McCall. Who cares if it rains in the gorgeous mountains, with great views, and good food. We had a nice lunch at a local brewery grill, delish! Sadly I didn't find anything at my regular thrift store, oh well. There was some snow on the mountain peaks, but at about 45 degrees, so not too bad.

We stopped at Stacy's Cake's for a dessert before leaving McCall and I LOVE this bathroom

shelf! 

Flystrike- A Chicken Killer-

As a small flock chicken owner it's really frustrating to lose a hen you've raised from a day old chick. I lost one hen to Flystrike a few years back. When I saw this article recently I decided to share it. It may save your birds life! I wish I had spotted it sooner, but I saw what was happening one day before I lost her. Better to know now... Flystrike-A Chicken Killer