Independence Day's Challenge & Happy 4th of July!

Independence Day's Challenge & Happy 4th of July!

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Hope everyone is doing well where you are. Here's a peak at some of our fun Fourth of July decor, most of it thrifted!

For my Independence Days Challenge here are a few different projects we've been working on...

Independence Days Challenge-

1. Plant Something- Nothing new to plant, still watching the garden grow.

2. Harvest Something- We got our first bell pepper, eggs, herbs, Lavender. Ready to harvest- Kale and Collard greens and Blackberries are almost ready-

3. Preserve/Store Something- I'm still working on doing more fermenting. Since I have a four-day weekend coming I plan on doing some more veggie batches. I'm also freezing more foods. I got some great deals on barbecue chicken parts, which I froze for the winter. Prices are cheap right now! We have pears and apples on the tree, pretty soon we'll be preserving those. Will do canning and maybe some freezing. Sadly only a handful of peaches this year, I think our 24° night that we had killed most of the blossoms. Bummer.

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep- I found some good used books and DVDs on eBay. I bought a book with fermenting veggies recipes. Always on the lookout for good deals at the grocery store to stock up on as usual. 

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe- I'm working on some older recipes I haven't done in a while. Last night I made this The Great Sardini Sandwich. I did add 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, yummy!

Will be making some Muffuletta Sandwichs as those are great for hot days too! 

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep- I found some good used books and DVDs on eBay. Always on the lookout for good deals at the grocery store to stock up on. Groceries too! 

6. Build Community Food Systems- Haven't been any farmer's markets open and many of them right now are drive up only, with orders ahead of time. Have been giving extra eggs to my kids.

7. Recycle/Re-Use- I repainted our bedroom curtain rod to white to match the rest of the hardware, and the trim in the room better. I used my own paint and upcycled my curtain rod by giving it a fresh coat of paint, no cost! Before picture- 

Painted outside-

All done! 

I used our paint tarp on top of the chick condo to keep them dry during the rain as well as some plastic we have on hand. I have updated a few things in my work from home office to be more comfortable. I suspect this is going to be a long-term proposition but I'm happy I have a job! And they also earned PTO the time I was off on low census for my work, awesome! I had a beautiful Bluebeard shrub that we had moved to our backyard, then got overtaken by blackberries oh, so I moved it again, it survived! I was able to borrow one of my daughters old CD and radio boomboxes so I can have some tunes while I'm working. It can be pretty boring working alone in the house by myself.

I will be re-painting my fave snowman sign, white paint it pretty worn, looking pretty dilapidated. I will ad some new fabric strips on the arms as well. I will use exterior house paint for durability-

Dave finished up a couple of bird houses we've got to up, and the next one I'm working on painting. I got rained out! What can you do? Next to paint with house paint is this one, made from recycled cedar we had-

Dave made this with recycled cedar and a Utah licence plate-

Dave got a spare pulley (bottom) and made a round birdhouse. It has a spoon for a perch. I bought the vintage funnel on eBay, $10.00, cute!

                                    

8. Skill Up- still working on my Retrosuburbia book for more ideas for our lot. Thinking about having a keyhole garden added on an existing flower bed in the front yard to add strawberries. I'd like to get more edibles into the front yard.

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something- We currently have some hard water spots on our two front windows, so I have decided to scrub them down with some Lime Away. We did this at my one daughter's house and it worked great. Their windows were much worse than ours. I started thinking that I'm looking out through water stains all day, at work in my home office. Should be easy to fix. We sprayed on Lime Away on the glass, after we watered down the plants below first to protect them. Next we scrubbed the lime away and I'll let it sit for a few minutes, next to rinse it off and see if you need to repeat. Pretty cheap fix.

Monday we're having Stanley Steamer come over and clean our carpets and couch. They did a great job a few years ago, just a lot of wear and tear. I wish we could afford to get hardwood through the whole house, but that's not going to happen. We have a really excellent Flexsteel couch that's just needing a good cleaning. Since they're coming anyway I'm going to have them do it!

We're currently looking at a way of rebuilding our existing coop without tearing the whole thing down. Most of the wood structure is still in pretty good shape, but it's the base it's the problem. We decided we don't really want to spend the money to tear the whole thing down, start over and have to move it to another location on the yard. So we may go ahead and bolster up the foundation, adding a stone/brick floor with dirt on top to keep the chickens from digging down so far. The chickens digging down into the soil is what's destabilizing a base. Time will tell...

Record Rain & Cold for June! Chick Ark and Garden Progress

Record Rain and Cold for June!
We got into the nineties two days ago and then this morning it was 48 degrees and pouring rain. A high of 60 degrees. A cold front blew in last night with some rain, thunder and a little lightning. This is getting kind of old! While I love having the greenery it's been challenging doing things outside. Neighbor's deck this morning-

Forecast this week-

Big storm today- 

 Chick Ark and Garden Progress-
I had our little girl chicks out in the garden after they "graduated" from being inside. Dang weather. We built a great little enclosure, separated from the two hens, hawk proof, to get everyone acclimated-

Yesterday I debated on either locking them up in the big coop with the big hens, but I thought there might be some aggression issues. Heavy rain was on the way. They've only had a few times out in the main garden with the big girls! Dang weather!

I decided to just cover their enclosure to keep them as dry as possible last night. It looked pretty funky but it seemed to work pretty well. This morning and afternoon after hard rain it was 90% dry inside. I used the painting tarp over the big tomato teepee area and then added wired-down clear plastic sheeting over most of the rest of it-

Girls nice and dry on upper deck, pine shavings and dirt dry below-

In the garden it's definitely is green from all this rain! The cabbages are doing great-

Kale ready to eat! Tomatoes on the other side growing fast!!! 

It is supposed to be in the 90's for my four-day weekend for 4th of July, happy dance! What's your weather doing???

Summer and Chick Condo, Day Trip, Windmill, Bees & A Basket

Chick Condo-
Summer is finally here I think! It was 87 yesterday and finally harvested our first radishes this week!

Yard is looking great and deck finally cleaned off-

We've kept our turf since it's so shady and the grand kids love to play there. If it was sunny I'd have other plans for it!

  

It was about time to finally be able to get the chicks outside. With the unstable weather and the pouring rain on the weekends we just couldn't do it before then. They've gotten to be the right size, feathered out and pretty spunky! Chicks generate tons of dust and they were in my "office". Boy did I deep clean later!!!  We were out of town Saturday on a day trip, so Sunday Dave and I designed and built a little temporary condo for them. Basically they stay outside for about a week so while the two older hens can get used to them and vice versa. Nobody gets killed, life is good. This system works really well and I've done it several times before. Basically I asked Dave to build it in about the same area we have before-

Scrap wood setting up in place, keep them out of the veggies

It's up against or cedar fence that goes into the easement behind our house. I saved some scrap cardboard from a large box, we had scrap OSB, cedar boards and lots of leftover chicken wire. Basically Dave and I cobbled together a little condo area with pine shavings in the shelter and the rest of it a little run. Basically it's triangular-shaped. We had to go around a tomato. Using my long cardboard I saved, adding chicken wire. We also covered the top with chicken wire to keep hawks out-

Added pine shavings under the roof

  

Food and water set up

They enjoyed the indoor area this afternoon, siesta time-

They have shade and shelter and if we get any heavy rains this week I'll put them into the coop, separate them or bring them inside. There's a chance of some thunderstorms Wednesday night so I'm going to watch the weather closely. A few sprinkles would be fine but not if it's pouring rain. They seemed to do pretty well the first afternoon, so I decided to leave them out overnight since it was only supposed to be 65 degrees, not too cold. I went out this morning, they were in the pine shavings in the sheltered corner and I said "where's Mommy's little girls?" They all came running out and started eating and drinking. Life is good!

Day Trip-
With all of the Covid craziness Dave and I really needed to get out of town for the day. We tried going the last two weekends, but we got rained out big time.  This weekend it was supposed to be mild and possible sprinkles. So we drove up to McCall up in the mountains where there's lots of trees, water, very green and beautiful. It was a nice drive up Hiway 55,  a winding road along a river up to the mountains and trees-

Hitting the flat part of the valley, pastures and cattle here and there, cloudy, no rain-

 It started drizzling just a little bit outside of McCall, but it was about 70 degrees and mild. Coming into town you hit a tee where the Payette Lake is straight ahead and the hotel on the right is where we've stayed for anniversary in the past-

They had a cool old Range Rover in front! Dave thought it's the same make and model that's in the BBC series Rosemary and Thyme- 

We had our usual lunch at McCall Brewery, great food! Later in the day we stopped at Stacy's Cakes, an amazing bakery! We got some desserts to go for that night. I love their menu and sign! 

We drove around the back of the lake, took some photos and a beautiful whitetail deer crossed the road in front of us, sorry no photo, happened too fast-

Funny to me on a certain level, fresh air used to be good for you!

We stopped at a little thrift store that we've been to before and I scored some fun items! For my beach table and wall, total $3.00-

$1.50 for flowers-

We stopped at the McCall Store and I got Dave a new tee-shirt for Father's Day and scored some local Huckleberry syrup-

We needed a new back door mat, our was trashed. I found this really gorgeous one at the local Ace Hardware store, love the design! McCall is an affluent resort type of town so they always has always have some fancy-schmancy things. Twice as thick as any I've ever seen before, longer too, hopefully will last a long time- 

Heavily knotted 

When we left McCall we took the back route home on Hiway 95, thru gorgeous valleys, then farms, ranches and the flat lands. It's a hour longer drive but a much easier drive-

We had burritos on the way home and crashed. Great day, glad we went! 

Windmill, Bees & A Basket-

Some fun scores lately! Recently I bought a sweet little windmill from LTD Commodities for the garden! It was $20.00 and heavy steel, happy dance. Then at Joann's Fabrics I bought a little clearance-priced framed bees print, $6.00, about 12" x 12", cute, hangs in the dining room-

and a little basket for the floor next to my end of the couch, on sale $10.00 -