Independence Days, Lighting A Coop, Facebook- No Thanks

Fall garden

Independence Days-
I've been getting over a bronchitis-y bug, but am still getting some things done. The weather has been great! Mid 60's during the day, mid 30's at night, clear and sunny.

1. Plant Something- Done for the year

2. Harvest Something- It's "goodbye garden"! All the tomatoes are now ripening on my kitchen counter. They'll be great four soups and pasta sauces. I picked the last bucket of basil and peppers.

3. Preserve/Store Something- Made fresh pesto and froze it all except one jar. Used that for dinner!

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep- Got a refurbished HP Windows 7 hard drive/CPU, $178.00 on BestBuy.com Computer #2 was dying. We had all the software we needed to set it up. Works great so far! I scored lots of higher end, brand new clothing at two thrift stores- winter sweaters and blouses. I've noticed if the Goodwill stores have new clothing in one store, they'll have it at the other as well. Score times 2!

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe- Made a wonderful pasta dish with my fresh pesto. Threw in ripe tomatoes, and other veggies. It was heavenly! Bought some local whole wheat pizza dough- used fresh tomatoes, peppers and fresh mozz. Wow, really good. Will try this this weekend, hopefully French Apple Cake, as I saw something similar on a blog, but then couldn't find it. I like the big chunks of apple.

6. Build Community Food Systems- Chickens are still being lazy, not many eggs. We increased the light that's helped some. Hope to sell some, but winter's coming on soon.

7. Recycle/Re-Use- Bought the re-furbished computer.

8. Skill Up- Had to do some research on buying a wireless "bridge" for a desktop to access wireless here. I get it now! Our old one died, along with the PC, new one is installed and working!

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something- Mended clothing.

Lighting A Coop For Better Egg Production-

Our hens really cut back on egg production when the days got shorter. With bad weather, Dave researched cheap, remote lighting set ups. Here's what we used, for $20.00, and I love the remote!!! We used this GE Outdoor Lighting Kit and Dave plugged the existing coop lamp into the timer. We had used the old fashioned timers before, but they don't work when it gets too cold. Now we just push a button to turn the lights on then off later. No going out in the bad weather, and dead timers!

Facebook- No Thanks-
I started setting up a Little Homestead Facebook page a couple of days ago. Then I read why you shouldn't do that- you lose control over your content, especially if it's all uploaded automatically. Not being a dot.com blogger, with ads everywhere, writing full time (must be nice) I decided to pass. Since I do this I couldn't afford to have someone set up a commercial page for me. When I feel like I'm making significant money off this, and am willing to give away the control over what I write, I'll let you know...

                                                                Bye, bye garden...