New career?

I have been feeling that itch to change careers lately. I am just not the type to stay at a job this long. This is the longest I've had a job before and it is getting to me. I need challenges and new problems to solve! Well tonight I may have found my perfect career. Actually it's not a new idea to me. I've thought about it many times before, it's just not practical.
I think I should to get into some kind of counseling. But not the psycho babble stuff. I want to be straight with people. Something like Dr Phil. I think I have a good insight into relationships and human nature. I should get paid to help people out!
I was just sitting at the hotel bar (I'm traveling for work at the moment) and a heavier guy sits down and strikes up a conversation with everyone at the bar. At one point he makes a jibe about being attractive and his weight and I respond something about wearing a wedding ring and someone finds him attractive. That opened the flood gates. He started sharing his marital problems with me and we ended up talking for a couple hours. I listened and gave advice and he left the conversation saying, "I never thought of that, that's really good advice, I'm going to have to think about that." He asked the bartender what she thought at the end of it all since she was a part of most of the conversation and she said, "I think she gave you some really good advice".
I enjoy helping people but only when I can be straight with them because I don't know them.
I don't pretend to have this knowledge because my marriage is perfect. Far from it. But as I told the guy tonight, every marriage has its rocky times, but if one party isn't willing to work through it and put the effort in, then it's doomed. My marriage has lasted strictly because Wolf and I both want it to and are willing to try to make things better. We make active decisions to make it work instead of making the easier choice of being resentful and vindictive and letting it go down hill all the while telling ourselves it's because of what the other person is doing.
I am all about personal responsibility. We can only control what we do. We can't change anyone else. So if you don't like something my question to you is, what are you going to do about it?

I am lucky enough to have excellent role models for a healthy relationship. I have told my parents before, if they ever split up I would lose all faith in marriage! I don't fool myself that their marriage is perfect but I have faith that they are committed to eachother and will work out the major bumps.
Unfortunately not everyone has this example. I should share that!
Sometimes people need a wake up call and a reminder that they are not pawns in their own life.
Now how can I get paid for that like Dr Phil did!?

My method of chicken keeping

A fellow blogger recently wrote a post about all the varied options of chicken keeping. (the original post can be found here http://104homestead.weebly.com/1/post/2014/01/hot-topics-controvercial-issues-of-chicken-keeping.html)
She did a great job of summarizing the top choices that are out there for the main areas of care. She inspired me to share what I do and why. I agree with her that the best thing you can do is what works for you. If you go against your nature and instincts and force yourself to do something because someone out there said it was the right way to do it, you'll be miserable and that's not right!
Sorry my topics are not in the same order as hers, I was working off memory.

1) bedding - I use shavings in the coop and straw in the enclosed pen. I do a modified deep litter. The reason it's modified is that our coop door doesn't allow for too deep of litter. Also the rabbit urine really mucks things up. She pees in the same spot (it's what rabbits do) which happens to be directly in front of the door so I can't give her a litter box. Her urine makes things smell a lot faster. Before the rabbit I could go months without touching their litter. I would just add a small amount of new shavings when it looked or smelled liked it was getting dirty. Now I have to turn things over about every 2 weeks and change out all of the litter every month or two. I don't do sand because I've known too many people who have had reptiles die from impacting their stomachs with sand, and I'm strictly too lazy to clean out the coop that often. I just rake everything into a wheelbarrow and dump it either in their run for further breakdown, in the compost pile, or on the garden beds if it's winter.

2) winter - I don't provide additional light. We have plenty of eggs and we feel like our chickens are our pets so we let them have a break when they feel they need it. Of course if one day we are getting 0 eggs for weeks at a time, I might change my mind about this. I might also get a laying flock in the future that is just for laying and I may give them light if production slows too much.
I don't usually provide heat. The only time I have was when we had a frigid spell and it was below 0 for multiple days. We don't normally get that cold and it came on suddenly so the girls had no time to adjust to it. For those few days I put a work lamp outside on a cement block for them. It had a cage on it and a sturdy stand so I wasn't too worried about them knocking it over. One of the polish did manage to burn half her crest off though by sticking her head between the cage and the light. Stupid bird!
I didn't put it in the coop at night but shined it on the side wall from the outside to hopefully provide some radiant heat. They seemed much happier once it was put out there. They went from huddling together in a bunch to walking around and chattering again. It wasn't warm by any stretch of the imagination but I think it at least kept it around freezing in their little area. It kept their water from freezing during the day so that's another good that came out of it.

3) Incubating - I think using an incubator and a broody both have their pluses. The hens definitely do a better job! But I like having chicks inside and bonding with them. I see a huge difference in friendliness between the chicks my daughter spent a lot of time with and the ones she barely held. We will be starting our first batch of eggs in our homemade incubator this week. Hopefully we get a good hatch, although I'm only allowing myself to hope for a 20% hatch rate. If I had a broody I would probably split all of my hatch candidates between the broody and the incubator.
When I have a flock of birds that are for meat and eggs I will definitely let a broody hatch those.

4) Food - I have tried crumbles, mash, pellets, and whole grain foods. I personally find that my girls waste anything but pellets. I feed organic to avoid GMOs. I also feed almost all of our kitchen scraps and edible trash to them. I also let them out into the yard to free range (only under supervision now). I ferment the pellets as a treat. They love it but I can't see feeding that 100%, possibly in the warmer months but right now the bucket is inside and it's a pain to bring food in and out so it is just a treat for now. I currently sprout wheat seeds for them as another treat. Next month I am buying a bunch of bulk seeds and am going to try feeding that dry, sprouted, and fermented instead of the pellets. I am exploring this avenue because I like being able to decide what is organic and what's not since some things aren't worth the high price since they aren't a GMO product and are known for not needing pesticides. I have made my own dog and cat food before with good results before so I've gotten over the initial worry about providing the right nutrients. I did my research, looked at a lot of recipes and found the things I felt were most important and the best way to meet those needs. Since my chickens get a lot of scraps and free range I know they'll be fine even if their food is lacking in something.
Of course price is an important issue. I found I can make their food for just 1cent/pound more than I pay for the pellets. I think that is close enough to warrant trying it. I'll write a post on that once I get started on it.

Pickled eggs

UPDATE below

Our family LOVES deviled eggs. We like them extra vinegary. In fact we serve them with a small bowl full of vinegar and dropper so each person can squirt to their heart's content on their egg before eating. So pickled eggs sounded like something we might like. I haven't brought myself to try them yet since Wolf likes them a little spicy. He has made 4-5 jars of them so far, always tweaking with the recipe.
He has found that our little bantam eggs work best for this since they fit in the jar so well and they are bite size. Anytime we build up a dozen I boil them for him and he pickles them. Today I'm going to make them for him as a surprise so he can think of me as I'm traveling this week.
I found this recipe for spicy pickled eggs I'm going to try.  http://www.thereallygoodlife.com/574/spicy-pickled-eggs-recipe/
The only tweak I did was to add a couple garlic cloves to the jar.
This recipe varied from others he's tried by not adding any water.
Hope wolf likes them!

UPDATE: Wolf just dug into these. He said they are good. :)

no poo

Shampoo that is! Last summer a friend of mine told me she stopped washing her hair. Of course this comment immediately made me look at her hair. Well, it looked normal so I was intrigued. She said she was only using baking soda. I filed this away as interesting  but didn't think about doing it myself. But as things often do, this idea brewed in the back of my mind. When I was younger it didn't matter what I used to wash my hair as long as it wasn't done too often or too infrequently. Too much and it made my hair dry and frizzy, too little and it is an oily mess. A washing about every 3 days is just about right. Then one day my head slowly starts itching more and more and I get dry scalp. I tried all the typical shampoos for this and while they sort-of work they mostly don't.
So I figure it won't hurt to try the no-poo method. I get a dollar squirt bottle from walmart and fill it half way with baking soda, fill with some warm water, shake, squirt on my head, rub it in, and rinse well. It turned out fine but didn't help my scalp completely. Then I read about a vinegar rinse and figured I'd try that. After doing a little research I decided to add some fennel too for dry skin. I now steep some fennel in warm raw apple cider vinegar for about 30min then bottle the vinegar in another squeeze bottle. After my "wash" with the baking soda I squeeze the vinegar right on my scalp in the places where I need it the most. It is very refreshing! Then let it sit while I finish washing. I rinse well and voila! My head no longer itches and I have no flakes! I do feel I need to wash it more often but that's ok since it isn't stripping my hair of all it's natural oils so I don't get the dry frizzy hair. I also find that if I do happen to go too long between washes, it's hard for the baking soda to remove all the oil and it takes a couple "washes" to get it back to normal. I also find that a good long rinse is important. Don't worry, the vinegar smell doesn't stay. My hair doesn't really have a scent to it at all.
So, give it a try! It's MUCH cheaper than shampoo and no harmful chemicals. I could even use my shower water as grey water for the yard if I was otherwise able to (it's illegal here!!!).

Red beans and rice

I've always thought red beans and rice liked good with its red gravy like coating. In A Fast Nearby she had a recipe for it and she makes it sound so wonderful. So to keep with my trying beans phase I though I'd try it. The day I made the refried beans I put my red beans in a pot to soak so I could do the red beans and rice the next day. Here's a lesson I learned, read the recipe before you do anything! While reading all of the bean recipes recently I kept seeing the instructions to soak the beans overnight, rinse them the next day then continue with recipe. So I did this without checking my recipe. The next day I read the recipe and it doesn't have that step and I could see why, as I rinsed my beans all that pretty red color went down the sink. I figured I'd push on. I followed the rest of the recipe but the beans never seemed to get soft. I cooked them an extra hour and still not soft. I cooked them do long I had to keep adding liquid to the pot and even started to burn the bottom at one point. Then when I mashed some to make the "gravy" they crumbled instead of being a smooth mash. I tried adding liquid but it didn't mix, I just had bean crumbles and liquid. Then add I'm finishing the beans I realized I hadn't put the rice on yet. I ravaged my cupboards to see what instant rice I had (those little 90 sec packets of rice come in handy sometimes). I found a couple with vegetables and one mixed grain that had quinoa in it. I chose that one since it had no added flavoring. It did not go well.
Luckily the sausage and fresh bread I picked were delicious. The rest was pretty much inedible. I didn't even take a pic out was so bad.
I'm not totally discouraged though. Since I know it was my own stupid fault it didn't turn out I'll try again one day. If it still doesn't turn it then I'm giving up on that dish!

Broth

UPDATE below

One of the main things we eat differently now is chicken. Since we raised our own meat birds we started eating the whole bird instead of just the breast from the store. I was giving my carcasses to a friend for her broth since I thought I didn't use enough broth, heck I don't think I bought any broth for many many years. Then I started actually cooking! So I started saving our bones and decided to try making some broth. I should've done it much sooner! It is so simple and tastes so delicious!!!

I had a really bad stomach ache one day when my parents were here. I'm talking I was laying flat out on the couch and couldn't move kind of ache. My mom made me some homemade soup from the chicken broth and within 30 minutes I was up and walking around again! About a week later I was feeling that same pain coming on so I made myself a bowl of broth and the pain never got worse that day. I had no idea plain broth was so tasty!

To make it, all I do is cut up some celery and onion, enough to cover the bottom of the crockpot, put in 2 carcasses, and cover with water. Then cook on low for about 12 hours. I then strain the broth and put it in mason jars. The first batch I just put in the fridge. The batch I have going right now though I'm going to actually process in my pressure canner so I can keep it on a shelf. I'm also going to use pint jars instead of quart because while I do use broth now, we don't go through it that quick and the last little bit I had in an open quart jar went moldy on me.

UPDATE:
I pulled out my other 2 quart jars of broth from the garage fridge and both had gone moldy. :( Glad I decided to process these. I hate throwing away the celery and onions, it seems like such a waste. I could give it to the chickens but that seems like too much hassle to get it separated from the bones for them. Sorry chickens I'm too lazy for that. So this time I decided to make some chicken noodle soup for DD with them. I did strain out all the bone and yucky parts for her.  I didn't look up any recipes so this is an experiment! I layered some gf pasta on the bottom of the jars, then the celery, onions, and chicken from the broth, some cut up carrots, then broth. I also did 3 jars of just broth.
I looked in my ball canning book for processing time and saw for their broth they said to let it cool and skim the fat off. Oh well, I missed that step. We'll see if it matters.

UPDATE: the broth didn't seal. I think it was because of the lids I was using. They were old ones I found at an estate sale. It didn't really matter though because I tried making red beans and rice that night (I'll post about that experience soon) and needed 6 cups of broth for it. The chicken noodle soup looked good though. The noodles expanded and looked cooked. Luckily those jars were using new lids. DD tried a jar last night and said it was good, only the broth was left when I looked. She did say it needed salt though so next time I'll add some seasoning to it. I love that she can have gluten free chicken noodle soup without all the sodium and added stuff.

Garden 2014 pt 2

I picked up the trellis material. It is much bigger than I pictured in my head even though the lady told me the dimensions. It is flimsier too. Luckily it has 1x4 pieces of wood every 2 ft to give it some structure. I'm not sure how it's going to work for trellises but if I can't find a way I'm sure I'll find another use for it.

I also updated my garden plan after some more planning/research. I'm really trying to meet my goal of being more prepared this year. To do this I have the drawn plan like I posted in my last garden post, but I also have an excel spreadsheet with multiple pages. I have one page for the crops we want to grow, when to start them indoors, when to start them under a row cover, when to transplant them outside, and any notes on that crop like succession planting, watering requirements, etc. The next page has some notes on how to rotate plants. The third and fourth pages are the first page broken down into spring and fall. Then I have a record of what we grew in 2013 and where. For my 2014 page I broke it out by months and what I need to do and when in each month. I also put a note on my calendar for each of these days that says "garden" to remind me to see what I'm supposed to be doing. For example Mar 14 it says to start my eggplants, tomatoes, leeks, and ground cherries indoors. The last page has my boxes laid out with each square foot assigned a number. So one box looks like this. I then put the number of the square something will get planted into next to it on my calendar. For example, May 15 says "basil (98-101)" which means on that day I'll plant basil in boxes 98, 99, 100, and 101. This way even if I lose my hand drawing I will still know my plan. This also allows me to remember where I planted what in previous years so I can rotate appropriately.

97	105	113	121
98	106	114	122
99	107	115	123
100	108	116	124
101	109	117	125
102	110	118	126
103	111	119	127
104	112	120	128

Beans

UPDATED at bottom

I'm on a mission to find more ways to eat beans that I like other than just refried. I was reading a book (A Feast Nearby) that talked about beans and it made me really want to love them. They are cheap, a good source of nutrition, and sound pretty easy to make. The only beans I ate growing up were refried on a burrito. My mom loves beans and puts kidney beans on her taco salad, loves bean soup, etc. Maybe it skipped a generation. I didn't even like green beans as a kid. Now I love fresh green beans and can even tolerate canned ones.
So... I bought 2 bags of beans at the store the other day. One bag of pinto and one bag of red beans. I want to try the red beans and rice recipe in that book and since I know I like refried beans, as does DD, I'm going to give those a try.

Today I started with the pinto beans. I was going to follow the recipe for refried beans in that book, but I don't think we'll eat enough and left overs really don't get used much (except to feed the animals) in our house.  So, I decided I'll can them, then we can have smaller portions. After looking at a few recipes online I went and did what I usually do... wing it!

I had a small bag of beans so using the measurement I found online I had enough for 4 pint jars (3/4c per jar). I found some recipes had  you soak the beans, others just threw them in the jars after rinsing, while my canning book said to boil them, let them sit for an hour, then boil again. I went in between and boiled them for about 15min while I prepared my jars and canner. I also saw different spice options. I just mixed up some garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, and salt in a bowl. No measuring, just dumping. Then I split the beans between my 4 jars, sprinkled some of my spice mixture over the top, filled with water from the boil, and processed them in my pressure canner for 1hr and 15 min (since I am at a high altitude I did this at 15lbs but those in lower altitudes should do it at 10).

They are still ticking away in the kitchen so I can't give you an update on how they turned out but maybe we'll have burritos for dinner tonight!
I'll update this thread when we've tried them.

UPDATE: we had burritos that night. The beans turned out great. Only negative was my new potato masher broke the very first time I used it. The beans lost a lot of their water in the canner but it turned out to be the perfect amount when they were mashed.

I also found the blogger app so it is much easier to add my pics to the post. Yeah!

Shooting

I've shot handguns multiple times but today I shot my first rifle larger than a .22. I was very nervous. I see how much those things kick and was afraid for my shoulder. I'm on the smaller side as far as frames go.
Wolf showed me how to load and aim and fired it first so I could watch. I could see his whole body jump back and he's much bigger than me so that scared me even more. He said he could barely feel it. He showed me where to put it on my shoulder so it wouldn't hurt my bone. I was shaking as I sat there. I gathered up my courage and pulled the trigger.... the gun jumped of course but I didn't feel it on my shoulder at all. It pushed me back but it felt like someone coming up, putting their hand on you, then pushing you. Nothing to worry about at all! I feel much better now about shooting rifles. Still not ready to shoot a shotgun though.

Brewing IPA

My uncle gave us a batch of IPA ingredients for xmas. We are just getting around to brewing it up. I'm not a big fan of hoppy beer so we opted to only put half of the full boil hops in.
We replaced our tubing and the guy at the beer store gave us a new sanitizer to use after the StarSan we already use. I hop it helps get rid of the sour taste we've been experiencing. We've also decided to not do a secondary fermentation on this batch to lower the risk of contamination.
Fingers crossed.


Update: bottling today (2/1/14) with 1tsp sugar in each bottle

Expanding the run

It's 19deg and snowing here today. I don't expect the girls to be coming out of their enclosed area at all. After seeing them staying in there in bad weather we have decided to expand their enclosed area (it's 40sqft but was intended for 4 chickens not 10!). We started getting things ready yesterday when it was 60deg out but didn't have time to get it built before this storm hit. :(

Here is their coop and their current pen. It's wrapped in plastic right now to keep the snow and wind out. This is looking at the front side of the coop with the door ajar. On the ground you can see the wood that will be the new border. This new area will extend to just past that ladder roost.

This view is from the main gate of their whole area. They have an area that is fenced off that they are closed into when we will be gone for extended periods of time or if we see hawks around. Where I am standing to take this pic is the corner of chain link that runs to my right to that wood fence you can see in the background, and straight down the left side of the pic to the fence on that side creating a sort of rhombus shape. You can see we'll be doubling the width of the pen. Yes, those are my neighbors houses in the background of both pics. We live in suburbia (for now at least)!

This tree is the one a hawk was sitting in after it tried to carry off our smallest chick. Which is the reason for the netting that's up now. There are still a few holes in our netting as you can see in the above pic above the pen. Luckily this will get closed off after this extension because we are making the new part taller than the old part so it will fill in this hole. 

Making alcohol

Wolf had been wanting to start brewing beer for awhile now. I wanted to start with something simple first so a couple friends and I made some hard cider. We each bought roughly 14lbs of apples (enough to make one gallon of cider), juiced them on the juicer I inherited from my parents, pitched some yeast, and let it go. I bottled them about a month later adding sugar for carbonation and xylitol for sweetness. Cider is more like wine and the longer it sits the more mellow it gets so those bottles are tucked away aging.
The fresh apple juice was so delicious that I have bought apples just for the juice a couple times now. Around Thanksgiving I also bought a glass gallon jug of apple cider, pitched some yeast into it, and am letting that sit. I want to see which turns out better.

I really need to get better at taking notes (hence the blog) because I don't remember what yeast I used for each, when they were bottled, etc. Hopefully going forward this will help me.

Wolf found a great deal on brewing equipment ($30 for a $100+ kit plus 48 bottles!) so we tried our hand at that too. We started with an Amber (don't know why since they aren't my favorite). At bottling we tasted it and it had a sour taste. We thought we'd try again after letting it age a couple weeks. Again a sour taste. Luckily Wolf can usually eat or drink just about anything so he continued drinking them. Our next batch was a wheat beer. It tasted delicious out of primary fermentation but after the second fermentation it had a woody taste to it. We were worried something had turned the beer sour. Possibly our tubing since it was used before. Within the last couple weeks the beer actually tastes pretty good so we're hoping it just needed to age.

I put the wheat beer in the fridge today. I'll crack one open this weekend and see how it is.

Update: I tried a wheat beer that weekend. It was undrinkable! Really sour. I'm thinking something definitely spoiled that batch. :( Wheat beers are my favorite and it was so delicious after primary that this really bums me out. Hopefully our changes (see IPA post) have fixed this. Next we'll have to do another wheat beer and see if we do better.