Hot DOG!!

Macs turns seven this year.
In the middle of Sept. actually.
He's been asking for a bunny for his birthday.
A bunny, and transformers.
He said he wanted one to snuggle and play with, and to be his buddy.
REALLY?
I have had bunnies. They are adorable.
They have CLAWS.
They like to get "unfriendly" if you don't spend a lot of time keeping them nice.
A
LOT.
I know you can keep them in the house.
I'm not really up for that kind of up keep.
And too?
They really aren't up for "playing" much.
I told Macs I didn't think he'd be getting a bunny for his birthday.
In fact, I'm not big on getting PETS for any "occasion".
I did consider a kitten.
Then I decided that since the kitten would be outdoors, I didn't really want to do that. There isn't a lot of time in our day for Macs to go outside and spend time with a kitten.
I even considered having rats again.
But they ALSO require a level of attention that I didn't think Macs could give. They are friendly, but to make them SUPER sweet, they need some attention and firm (gentle) touch I don't think Macs has. He's too timid to keep a rat from running all over the couch.
Then today happened.
We were at a local festival, and just outside one of the vendor's spots, there were PUPPIES.
Miniature Dachshund puppies. Marked like a Rottweiler.
Oh.
My.
Lanta.
Before Josh was born, we had wiener dogs. They were great. When we had our Rottweiler, Kenya, we always wished we could afford a mini with Rottweiler markings.
The puppies at the festival were adorable, and a price we could manage.
The dogs are in the house with us.
They are also REALLY good with the boys.
And. There was the Chihuahua that Macs fell head over heels in love with the other day...
Dachshunds are small... the parents of these pups were 6 and 7 pounds...
You know where this is going.
And so, an early birthday present came to be...




His name is Bud.
™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

Homemade Laundry Soap

It's interesting to me to hear old time remedies, and cleaning tips like using vinegar as a fabric softener... somewhere a long the road, we've been conditioned that we need to use chemicals and "special" cleaners for things. What strikes me even harder, is how often I'll try an old fashioned cleaning solution, and find that it works BETTER than the store bought supplies. Not only that, but most of the solutions I like best also happen to have WAY less chemicals. At the very LEAST, I can pronounce the ingredients in my cleaning detergents.

I've started making my own laundry soap a while ago. I wanted to wait until I made my second batch before I shared the recipe I came up with by combining tips and ingredients of a couple different recipes I found on line. Most of the recipes I found on line call for a castile soap, which I can get in the laundry section of a nearby store, but SouleMama shared that her family uses Dr. Bonner's soap (which is still a castile soap) It's also fair trade and all natural, so I chose to use that. Amanda's recipe is for dry soap, and since my washer seems to be lax in it's rinsing, I chose to try a wet version. I also think the wet mix goes a little further. You can also use soaps like Ivory and I've heard a brand called Zote works too. I have only used Dr. Bonner's Peppermint. Each bar is around $4.00 a bar. I can get it locally for about $3.85.

Another key ingredient is washing soda. DO NOT confuse WASHING soda with BAKING soda. Arm and Hammer makes them both, but they are not the same. Washing soda is sodium carbonate or soda ash, and baking soda is sodium BIcarbonate. I could not find this anywhere locally, but ACE Hardware carries it, and if your local store doesn't have it on it's shelves, you can order it on line, and have it shipped to your local ACE for free to be picked up. That's what I did. A box of it cost me $3.79. I'll be able to get quite a few batches of soap from one box.

The other two ingredients are easy to find. Borax and Baking Soda. Borax (and sometimes baking soda) can be found in the laundry isle of most stores. At our WalMart, there was a HUGE bag of Baking Soda in the pool isle. 12 pounds of it! lol That will last me even longer than the Washing Soda. It was a little over $6.
HERE is a printable version of this recipe.
You'll also need:
1 container that will hold 2 gallons. I bought my container at WalMart for less than $10.00
1 Cheeze grater
1 Pot that can hold 10 cups of water on the stove
Here goes:
1 bar Dr. Bonner's soap, grated.
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup borax powder
*optional: 5-6 drops essential oil for added scent. In my case that would be peppermint, because that's the soap scent I used. You can make whatever scent you'd like tho.

Put the grated soap and 6 cups of water and heat in your pot on a medium heat until the soap is melted. Here's what things look like at the start of the heating:

I stirred mine most the time. Add the washing soda, baking soda and borax. *add essential oil now if you choose to use them. Stir all ingredients until the powders are also dissolved. Here's what they look like when everything is added and disolved:

Pour 1 gallon and 10 cups hot water into your jar (it is especially important to warm a glass jar this way before adding the mix from the stove.) Add the soap mix to the jar and stir. (There are 16 cups in one gallon. You should have a total of 32 cups of water or 2 gallons TOTAL water in your mix when you are finished.)

Let the mix stand for 24 hours before using. It will thicken to a consistency of what most people call "egg flour soup" thickness. It's lumpy, and that's normal. I use 1/2 cup of the finished mix with each load. Here's what the solution looks like 24 hours later:

From what I've read on line, this soap also works in HE front loading machines. I don't have that kind, so I don't know personally. On all the sites I found with laundry soap recipes, commentors that did, and had tried it, said it works good! I do know it's a low suds solution.
TROUBLE SHOOTING:
If you find that your wash isn't coming out as nicely as mine... you may try adjusting your ingredients according to whether or not you have hard or soft water.
HARD WATER: If you have hard water, your water has high pH. Try using less Baking Soda. Baking Soda is used to raise pH.
SOFT WATER: If you have soft water, your water has low pH. Try using less Soda Ash, which lowers pH levels in water.
You might also just try using smaller amounts of solution and see what results you get.

Additionally, I use vinegar as a fabric softener inside a Downy Ball. (even though the ball says not to use with anything OTHER than Downy... I'm a rebel like that.) I fill the ball according to it's instructions for the size load I have. It dispenses the vinegar at the right time in the cycle. There's no vinegar smell to my loads when they are finished either!

When I'm not using my solar dryer (laundry line) I plan to use Wool laundry dryer balls. (which I still need to make) The lanolin in the wool acts the way a dryer sheet would act in the dryer, cutting down on static.

My laundry is coming out feeling more clean. I never noticed that my soaps were leaving a residue until I felt laundry that DIDN'T have that. The peppermint isn't strong enough to make my laundry smell like it, so I'm adding some more peppermint scent in the form of essential oils. Instead, the laundry comes out odor free, even when it goes in stinky. My whites seem whiter to me, and everything except thicker towels are super soft even when they are dried on the line.

ALSO... reading on line, I think I could use this solution on my dishes... I'll be trying that soon to see if it's true.
™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

One Order of Bamboozle Over Easy, please

The egg recall count is over 550 MILLION.
MILLION.
Some of the companies affected had brand names like Hillandale Farms, Sunny Farms and Sunny Meadow and Farm Fresh. Really? FARM!?
This is the kind of labeling that I was talking about when I said that industry is using our willingness to be bamboozled. My hens (and most) lay an egg a day. Battery hens are bred specifically to lay eggs. Most chickens that are bred to increase their laying still only lay 2-3 eggs a week. Lets say in these cases, hens were at the peak of their production, laying 3. According to one site reporting on this recall, eggs in question were bought from APRIL thru August. That's FOUR MONTHS in case you didn't catch that. (and I'd be willing to bet THEY caught it long before the recall and didn't do anything about it.) We'll average the time as guess that's about 120 days. That means that somewhere on these "farms" there are 4,583,333 hens laying eggs. That's FOUR MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED and THIRTY THREE hens. Industry is taking advantage of our willingness
TO
BE
BAMBOOZLED.
Battery Hens. They are the "FARM" that most of America's eggs come from. A living assembly line so to speak. They are housed in cages stacked to the ceiling. You think a bonified in the country farm smells? Battery hens live in feces. They breathe so much ammonia every day, that many of them have severe respiratory illness. Many become egg bound, (the eggs they produce daily become stuck inside their bodies) and are left unattended with eggs stuck in their prolapsed cloaca. (which will eventually kill them)
Given a choice, it seems to me that the choice is obvious.
THIS:

photo used with permissions via Creative Commons: by Maqi
or this?

BUT.
To have a CHOICE... we have to stop allowing the bamboozle.
In my opinion, we are obligated as consumers to KNOW WHERE OUR FOOD IS COMING FROM. Watch this video and tell me that the occasional speck of FRESH poo that might be found on a TRUE farm fresh egg is worse than eggs being laid in battery barn conditions. I dare you to take a look at what is common practice in the chicken/egg industry.

Eggs laid by chickens living covered in poo from other chickens. Eggs laid by chickens who are so stressed out that their feathers are GONE. Eggs laid to the deafening sound of thousands of other hens laying eggs. (which is noisy business even when just ONE hen is doing it) Eggs laid next to the decomposing bodies of other chickens that do not survive and on top of that, are not removed from the cage.
Yes. Keep telling yourself that you don't WANT to know. That's always a good choice. It keeps you safe, right? Is it any wonder that the chickens laying these contaminated eggs GOT contaminated in the first place?
There ARE options!!
Something that bothers me when things like this surface, is that a lot of hard core activists use these moments as a time to tell you that the ONLY choice is to go meat/dairy free. That ALL farms are created equal evil. That simply all farms are bad and detached and heartless. I'm here to tell you, that's NOT true. There ARE real farms out there. There are farmers who CARE about the animals they raise to provide food for their family and possibly the families of others.
You have choices. Not all of them involve a drastic change in diet. Some of them may mean some pretty big changes. Here are just a few of the choices you have:

1. KNOW WHERE YOUR FOOD COMES FROM. I shop at large stores. I don't ONLY shop at the health food store and the farmer's market. When I did not have my own chickens, or know anyone who had fresh eggs to be had, I GOOGLED. Good Lord, I love Google. One of the egg brands sold at my store was Wilcox. I was THRILLED to see the honesty and integrity of the farm. They are in the process of changing from some caged facilities to all cage free and organic eggs. I was willing to support that. I AM willing to support that. It's just that I don't need them now. :) I also recently Googled when I found a coffee at Costco that I thought looked like it might be fair trade. I searched the bag and found a web address for the company. When I went home, I discovered I was right about it being fair trade! Don't get me wrong. Occasionally, I still buy meat I don't know. There has been, however, a change in how I think about food, and the more I think about it, the more I'm trying to make a change to a place where I KNOW where my food comes from. Even if it IS bought from the industry. I truly believe that by using my $ to vote, the industry will change to meet MY demands. Wilcox is a good example of how this is true.
2. GROW YOUR OWN. Don't live on a farm? Don't have a big yard? I STILL encourage you to look into raising your own chickens!! You don't need a rooster to get eggs, and even the smallest porch has better space than any battery. Take a look at the things you can do to create a space for hens even in the city. Just two chickens can provide a family with a dozen eggs a week! (I don't recommend less than two chickens. They are social animals)
3. GROW FOR OTHERS. If you have the space, you don't have to have a lot of chickens to be able to provide eggs for other families. I currently have 12 hens. Once they reach their full laying potential, I should be able to provide 5 families besides my own with a dozen eggs every week. Even if your chickens can't freely roam. There's much to be said for knowing that they live in a clean, warm, cozy home with room to stretch their wings, and some table scraps at dinner time. :)
4. FIND A FARMER. Even if you live in a city, it's not impossible to think that there may be someone near you with eggs to supply. I recommend starting at a Farmer's Market. If you don't have that available to you, try Craig's List. I recently went on in search of a certain kind of chicken, and found a TON of listings from folks with eggs to sell.
5. TOUR TOUR TOUR. There is a reason that footage of battery facilities are taken most often under cover. Because the industry knows WHAT IS HAPPENING IS DISTURBING. However, NOT ALL FARMS ARE CREATED EQUAL. Wilcox farms has posted recently on their Facebook Page, that they welcome interested parties to set up a time to tour the facilities. That means they don't HAVE something to hide. There isn't enough time in their day to cover up conditions that would/could be detrimental to whether you'll keep shopping there. Visit the farm you get your eggs from. If you came to visit me, I'd show you how my hens come running from whatever corner of the yard they are roaming free in, at the sound of my voice. (and we would laugh hysterically, because a running chicken is FUNNY.) I would show you where they lay their eggs, and what I feed them. I'd tell you each of their names, and how Princess Bossy Pants got her name because she likes to tell the others what to do a lot. I'd tell you that Hedwig was named after Harry Potter's snowy owl because she looks like one herself, and that she lays a pretty brown egg. I would tell you that Nugget lays these pretty brown eggs with white spots:
6. DO NOTHING. Keep allowing yourself to be bamboozled. It's what the those doing the Boozling WANT. Let someone else decide how and where your food is raised. Don't look at what that may look like.I didn't realize how much I was willing to be bamboozled until I watched Food Inc. Now I've learned that there is a different level of appreciation that comes from knowing your food. From being willing to look my food in the eye. That a happy hen made sure to put her egg in a nest I provided for her because it was a good place to CHOOSE to lay an egg, not because she was stuck there and had to lay it where she was held captive.

We as consumers hold onto the idea that because "THEY" are in charge of it, THEY will make sure that we're getting the BEST. I challenge you to take a serious look at what you know about your food. In reality, we are allowing ourselves to be bamboozled. THEY are in it for the money. It's about the numbers, baby, and the numbers are GOOD. Just take a look at them!! 550,000,000 eggs that you and I cannot EAT. Yet when we visit the store... there are STILL eggs.

Check yourself. Are you willing to be bamboozled? Maybe eggs aren't your thing. That's OK. I don't care if you eat them or don't. I don't care if you like them or you don't. Choose to stop eating eggs if that's what you decide. Choose to keep eating the ones provided for your convenience by the industry. Just stop allowing someone ELSE to decide for you. Stop letting someone ELSE decide how the hens that lay your eggs are treated. Yes. Chickens can be stupid. (I mean seriously. The way OUT of the pen hasn't changed, ladies... you STILL can't figure out it's in the back?) At the same time they are intelligent. (they recognize my VOICE. I don't even have to call them. If they hear me TALKING outside, they come running) They are God's creatures. They are deserving of respect and good stewardship. Just because they are useful to me doesn't mean they don't deserve to be treated with dignity.
Still willing to be bamboozled? Fine. There's a dozen eggs in Iowa waiting for you...

™

I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

For Brown Gramma

My apologies for the tipping of the camera toward the end of the video.


™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

Ghost Eggs

Also known as witches eggs.
It's very common for new egg layers to start out their laying days with a few "practice" eggs. Until my most recent batch of pullets, I had never seen one in real life. Our first three layers never laid any. For some reason, I never thought to take a photo of the first one. Then the next couple that got laid broke before I found them, and then the girls started laying REAL eggs, and I missed the chance. Recently, a couple more pullets started their practice runs. They seem to do it at night, like they may have "pooped" it out in their sleep without even knowing. Most of the time, the eggs fall from roost height, and they break. This one, however, landed on the step ladder I had in the house. It split, but you can see that the shell isn't there. It's just the membrane that covers the egg INSIDE the shell. They come out all wet and sloppy, and this one landed in some dirt and mess, so it's not very pretty. I just wanted to share what they look like, since I found photos hard to find when I was trying to figure everything out. Some people call them rubber eggs.

™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

Green Egg!

I'm getting about 5 eggs a day now, with more of the pullets starting to lay! I've been wondering if my hopeful green egg layer was laying, and hoping she hadn't started yet... because I hadn't gotten any green eggs yet. Today, when I checked the nests, THERE WAS A GREEN EGG!!

Thank you, Sweet Cheeks!

I also caught one of my favorite hens on the nest... Good ol' Henny Penny. :) I love that chicken. I'm not even sure why... she just makes me smile.

™

I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

He's SWIMMING.

My first two boys LOVED baths from the day they were born. When Josh as a baby, you could calm him down with one. Water was a favorite, hands down. Then along came Macs. He HATED water. Was too afraid no matter what we tried to play in any pool. Even when we had one of our own. At the beginning of THIS summer, he wouldn't even relax enough for me to teach him how to float on his back. So all summer, he's been wearing a float around his waist.
Float example. Pay no attention to the blurry grown ups in the background...

Yesterday...
YES
TER
DAY...
We discovered that he has taught himself to swim. He forgot his float at home, so Travis went home to get it. While Travis was gone, Macs asked to practice his swimming where he could touch. Next thing I knew, he's SWIMMING. Breast Stroke, Back Stroke, you name it. He jumped off the shore dock with Travis later, and they swam to the middle of the river to the OTHER dock. I can't believe he's SWIMMING!!

I can't believe how fast he's growing up...
™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

Thrifty Hen Houses

When I first started with chickens, I lived in the city. I made what's called chicken tractor big enough to hold about 4 chickens. You can see it HERE. Since then, we've moved to the country, and I'm able to have more chickens, but we don't really have an extra $500 - $1,000 to build a larger hen house. So I did the next best thing. I improvised. When I made the tractor, I used a horizontal storage shed for the hen house. Naturally, when I was thinking about what we already had, that I might use to create a larger house my mind turned to storage.
I decided to use a metal 3X7' ish storage shed. Today, Travis and I finished up the nesting area, and I put in clean bedding, so I thought I'd share what we did to make our metal storage shed into a hen house. We secured the wood floors, and added a piece of wood to the interior of the door to keep the bedding in and make closing the doors at night easy.

Inside on either side of the doors, there were two shelves. I added a roost under the bottom shelf. Today, Travis helped me add wood fronts to the shelves to create nesting boxes. I also added some Madrone branches from the property for roosting at a higher level across the top two shelves, with one branch coming from the floor to the upper area for them to climb on.
Here's a view of the left area:

and it's right side counter part:

I'm hoping the new nesting area will appeal to the hens and they'll start laying in them instead of on the floor of the hen house under the roosts. lol Keep your fingers crossed for me! Otherwise, they'll just have really comfy bed. (which is what they used them for before we added the wood to the fronts of the shelves and added the straw.) All 13 chickens are roosting there now, and they fit pretty nicely! In the day, I let them all out to free range. Keep in mind that if you live in very hot or very cold climates, a metal shed may not be right for chickens, but here in the NW, they work pretty nicely!!

™

I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.

August Equals CRAZY

August is always our busy month... and this year was no exception!! We even started a little early! This is what's been keeping us busy these last couple weeks:
With a view like this:

Why would you spend time anywhere else BUT the river? My "panoramic" view of the beach we spend just about every afternoon at.
While we were there, we saw this guy!

A kingsnake!! SO cool. Biggest one I've ever seen.
I took photos of Ian and Amanda.

They make taking pictures SO HARD... lol
We took in a goat.

She is the sweetest thing ever. The family of the owner that gave her up wants to take her. I hope they give her a good home. She deserves it.
More pullets are laying eggs!

Click on that picture, and I THINK you'll be able to see that this one is cream with WHITE spots! (instead of brown spots)
We had a HUGE family reunion.
I love all our "aunts, uncles, grammas, grampas and cousins" that we have.

Macs made his first ringer on daddy's new horseshoe pits! The pits are even lighted so we can play at night! :)

So what's been keeping YOU busy?
™
I love comments! Scroll DOWN to comment if you followed a direct link to this post. Scroll UP, to just below the title of this post if you arrived here via a general link to my blog's homepage.