Finding hope in chicken poop

How the heck do you find hope in chicken poop?!?!

A few years ago I read the book Harvest For Hope by Jane Goodall and went back and forth between feeling very overwhelmed by all of the madness we have created and feeling very empowered and quite capable of making changes in my day to day life to help our planet as well as become a healthier person in the process.  While my actions have ebbed and flowed over the past few years my passion has maintained.

These days there are lots of things to be worried about including (but not limited to) earthquakes, tsunamis, civil wars, the economy, radiation levels, plastics, chem trails, crime statistics and where I might be able to purchase some good-for-me-food.  At times it can all feel very heavy and I find myself wondering what difference I can make, really, in the grand scheme of things.  Unfortunately, I can't control the tectonic plates, crazy men with guns or the planes that fly over our heads, however, there are a couple of things I have come up with that I do have the power to control.  Small things?  Yes, but sometimes all we can do is look at the little things and hope they add up.

~I can appreciate our chickens for their eggs and their personalities
~I can tell Monsanto to suck it.
~I can use my beat up water bottle a thousand times and purchase plastic water bottles zero times
~I can grow some of my own food and save seeds and grow some more food (and be very excited about it)
~I can vow to use my last roll of paper towels and not purchase them ever again
~I can take shorter showers and purchase more rain barrels
~I can drive less and carpool more
~I can seriously consider the purchase of a bike (hopefully on sale) and ride like a kid again
~I can continue our membership of a CSA and really learn how to cook seasonally
~I can shop at the Farmer's Market occasionally and set the intention to shop there more than occasionally
~I can compost my leftovers and leaves and chicken poop
~I can build more raised beds
~I can fill our bird feeders and feed the birds
~I can wait patiently for our bees to arrive in the mail and look forward to their fantastically yummy honey and
  magical pollination
~I can remember that hope can be found in the people around me, the cluck of a chicken and the warmth of
  my home grown mint tea

That's how you find hope in chicken poop!  Cheers!

Love in nature

I believe firmly that love really is all around us.  All we have to do is keep our eyes and our hearts open.  Here are just a few of the hearts I've found in nature in the past year.  I'll continue to post more pics as I find them.  

I've also found hearts in puddles of water on paper plates, the chipping away of flagstone and a bent up toilet paper roll, to name just a few non-nature-type places ;-)

Self-Care

Sometimes I think that, amidst all the hustle and bustle that fills each of our days, you must insist on a day (or 30 minutes, an hour, a morning or afternoon...whatever you can spare) in which you allow yourself to do only the things you want to do.  Not the things you "have" to do or think you should, but only the things that will make your heart happy.  This usually requires the intentional quieting of that nagging voice in the back of your head talking about the dirty laundry that is becoming a mountain, the new chicken coop that must be started and the soaker hose that needs to be replaced. However, I find that once I really give myself permission to enjoy the day, that voice quiets itself and finds something more exciting to do.  

Today was one of those days.  So, what did I want to do with this day???  Well, first I repotted some of the seedlings that have sprouted over the last couple of weeks.  So, tomatoes and lemon cucumbers now have some space to stretch their little roots.  

Then, I cracked open my new seed starter kit and planted some peanuts, more lemon cucumbers, rosemary, chamomile and sage.  I have decided that, in our 5 X 11 1/2 foot bed that needs some healing, I can plant 21 peanut plants so I planted 50 peanuts in the little seed starter (2 per section) which will give me 25 plants to transplant IF they all germinate and survive after I thin them out.  I am VERY excited about this project!  However, as I have said before, I am learning all this planting and growing and self sufficiency stuff through doing.  Today I learned that I do not need 5 pounds of raw peanuts to plant the 21 plants that fit in my little space.  So now it looks like I will be learning how to roast the other 4 pounds and 15 ounces that are left in the bag!

I also spent some time with the Newbies (AKA, The Babies, The Chicks, Prim, Gimpy and the Other Two) in our front yard.  I read a gardening magazine, soaked up some Vitamin D and laughed at the Newbies and their crazy antics.  

At one point we brought out one of our (original) Ladies to see what would happen.  She wasn't impressed, and neither were the Newbies.  Whew!  We're not ready for them to be together yet, but this is a good sign!  We've heard that when you introduce new chicks to your chickens you should do it at night.  This way your chickens just wake up the next morning and think the Newbies have always been there.  We'll see if that's really the truth of what happens...but not yet.  Stay tuned.

After all the excitement, the Newbies decided it was time for a nap.

Then, I decided it was time to try to figure out how many eggs we've collected from our ladies over the past several months.  I, unfortunately, did not keep track as I should have.  However, this is what I've figured out based on memory and averages.  We have, since last August (when the Ladies started laying eggs that were actually edible), collected approximately 525 eggs!  That is 43.75 dozen eggs!  If you consider that a dozen organic eggs costs about $4.00, we have saved $175!!!  That, of course does not count feed costs and the cost of building the coop, but if you factor in those costs, we should be even before the Newbies start laying!  Super exciting!  Now I have even more incentive to track our eggs!

In addition to the seeds, chickens and egg counting, I also re-potted this beautiful new Aloe!  Love, love, love the GREEN!

  

All in all, it was a very good day.  With all of the seriousness life has to offer 99.9% of the time, I truly believe it is important to take some time for self-care in whatever form works at the time.  Right this minute the form is shifting from the homesteading type things I've been today to m-u-s-i-c!  Cheers!

Peanuts!

This year I have gotten very excited about planting some peanuts as a different way to grow some protein and heal our soil at the same time.  

Valencia Peanuts (the ones with the red skin) grow best in our crazy climate, so I ordered them and had them sent via UPS (shipping was just as much as the peanuts themselves!).  $16 and 5lbs later, here they are!!!  However, they require a good 150 days of growth to actually produce their peanuts, and we generally only get 120 days of frost free growing time so these little guys will start their journey inside this weekend.  Cheers!

Spring has officially arrived!!!

With spring officially upon us I find myself remembering how many hours of hard, dirty work it takes to get the yard ready for planting!  All winter long, while I'm warm and cozy, hibernating and stuck inside, I fantasize about being in the yard with the sun on my back and the warm soil at my fingertips.  I forget, however, about my sore feet and back, splinter covered hands and scraped up arms.  I also tend to misjudge how many hours each task might take.  For example, "Oh, that's no problem, we can whip out those two raised beds in just a couple of hours!"  Six hours later, I'm hobbling to the shower to wash the dirt from my happy, exhausted face.

I am a newbie at this whole gardening thing and am (truly) learning as we go.

So, this weekend (blessed with 60+ degree weather both days...and all last week as well...I am hoping this year will be the exception and we will NOT have a snow storm in May...at an elevation of 7,000+ feet though, anything is possible!) we built two new raised beds in our backyard and filled them with nearly a yard and a half of soil from the nursery (hours of shoveling out from the back of the truck, into a wheel barrel and carted through the front yard into the back), finished the Top Bar hive (now we just wait for our bees and supplies to arrive), re-mulched 95% of our paths in the front yard (we have mulch down over weed cloth for our walking paths because, honestly, it's cheaper than stone and easier on the feet than the awful gravel we removed) as well as around all the Frankenstein fruit trees, planted the blueberries that have, until now, been living in pots on our back porch, watched a bunch of the seeds I planted last week emerge into seedlings, cleaned out the three beds/areas that lay outside of our fence by the street (these three hold mostly Russian Sage) and gave our 9ish year old neighbor advice on growing his very own (school project) cabbage.  

We also opened up our "wagons" to find the kale finally looking like kale and the newly planted spinach, lettuce, beets and snow peas reaching for the (plastic covered) sky!  With the weather being as warm as it's been, we will have to get in there more often than the once-a-week-peek we've been doing to water those babies.  

OH!!!  More happiness...In my travels throughout the yard today, I found our strawberries putting out new leaves, our baby rhubarb jumping beautifully, our daffodils peaking green in our rose bed (coming up in no particular order and all moved around by our crazy chickens scratching in the bed this winter), our Frankenstein trees putting out leaves and several crickets (I think I upset a whole village of 'em) which is exciting because this means that soon I will be hearing their songs every evening!  (I'm such a nerd!)

Whew!!!  No wonder I'm tired!!!  I am super grateful to not be doing any of these projects alone and am even more grateful to have the choice to do these projects...Meaning that, even if I don't plant veggies in the garden, I won't go hungry, I'll just have to purchase them from someone else who did all the hard work...which really, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't sound like much fun at all! 

 

Next weekend we'll attend our very first seed exchange, work on our new chicken coop, plant some more seeds (I'm working on trying some succession planting this year) and...who knows what else?!?  The possibilities are endless!!!

Spring(ing) Forward

With the time change (and my body's inability to figure out when to sleep and when to wake) also comes more light and Spring being (officially) in view!  HooRay!!!

Last weekend we did a little spring cleaning and prepping...and I'm just writing about it now because it was all quite exhausting and I ran out of time!

We (meaning Kim AKA Tool Lady, I watched) expanded our compost pile from 4 hay bales into 6 and discovered we need many more worms to keep up with our massive compostable contributions!  Next weekend we will have to make a trip to the Farmers Market to acquire some :-)  We will also (unfortunately) have to purchase some compost this year as what we have made is not nearly enough for all our beds...especially since we purchased more wood this weekend for two additional raised beds to build in our back yard (I think we're building next weekend...).

We also purchased some cinder blocks and raised our little water catcher.  We only have one right now (ideally we will have three before any rains start this year).  We purchased this guy a couple of years ago and have had to carry buckets of water from it to water because it sat too low and gravity was not working its magic.  We're thinking about planting some strawberries in the holes in the block...

Kim also built this fantastic Top Bar Hive for our yet-to-be-purchased honey bees!  I know that we're already late in ordering them (I really want local bees from up in Truchas) but am hopeful we can make it work for this year!   This little guy will live in our front yard tucked in a corner by our cherry and apricot trees and I'm planning to plant a bunch of flowers all around it.  We have Russian Sage on our property which the bees love too, so they should be super happy once we get them and give them their new home.

While Kim was building, I was planting!  I don't have any pics yet, but I planted 72 little pellets with lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, several herbs and a few lemon cucumbers (one package of these guys said to start inside and the other didn't, so I figured it was worth a try...I'll decide later if it was worth it).

We also let the babies outside again (Prim didn't cry quite as much as she did on her first excursion) to play happily with our friend Farrah in the gorgeously warm afternoon sun.  And, yes, Prim still towers over her sisters.  She's like a monster, but a very pretty monster with all her beautiful red feathers coming in nicely.

Saving and buying and trading and planning and planting...Oh my!!!

I have finally completed my list of seeds...What I have and what I want.  While I have not begun planting yet...I plan on starting the babies inside next weekend...I definitely have (almost) Spring Fever!!!  Here are all of the seeds that will go into the ground this year somewhere in our yard!  Some were saved from last years harvest, some purchase, either locally or online and some were traded.  I still have a few I want to purchase, but am having a hard time finding the peanuts and the soy beans! (The multiples are different types, just not written in detail here.)

Saved

Sunflowers

Morning Glories

Cosmos

Peonies

*Dr. Suess

Tall Wild Grass

Butternut Squash

Pie Pumpkin

Pumpkin

Beans

Pinto

Black

Squash

Zucchini

Corn

Purchased

Bean Bush Trio

Garden Beans

Peas

Snow Peas

Spinach

Carrots

Carrots

Carrots

Corn

Tomato

Tomato

Tomato

Tomato

Tomato

Ground Cherry

Beets

Lettuce

Lettuce

Arugula

Jalapeno

Jalapeno

Peppers

Peppers

Tomatillo

Cucumber

Cucumber

Watermelon

Eggplant

Sunflowers

Convolvulus

Nasturtium

Wildflowers

Dill

Dill

Rosemary

Echinacea

Chamomile

Basil

Basil

Sage

Traded

Kota Tea

Cosmos

Still need/want

Valencia Peanuts

Snap Peas

Nasturtium Soy Beans

*The Dr. Suess flowers are flowers that came form a wildflower mix I got last year and have no idea what they are.  What I do know is that they are tall and crazy and beautiful and straight out of a Dr. Suess book!

Side view of one of our "wagons" - a 5x6 raised bed we built last spring

In the meantime, we have garlic and onions growing happily in one of our raised beds turned hoop house AKA The Wagons!  The beets we planted haven't done anything so I replanted today.  Fingers crossed!  I also planted some spinach at the front of this bed today.

Side view of "wagon" #2 - a 4x6 bed we built last spring

In this bed, we planted cauliflower and a bunch of kale.  Truth be told, we planted very late in the fall last year, so not much worked.  A little (literally) kale here and there, but zero cauliflower.  I planted a lettuce mix in here today.  These "wagons"/hoop houses have plastic that goes over their tops and gets held down onto the beds base with clamps.  It keeps it several degrees warmer in there throughout the winter which allows us to grow throughout the year.  At least, it WILL allow us to grow throughout the year when we work out all the kinks and figure our how to PLANT throughout the year ;-)

On another note, we let the new babies outside for a few minutes today to soak up some sun.  They were very excited!  All except the one we call Prim.  She's the biggest of them all but spent the whole time crying like a baby while the other three were perfectly content!

Prim and Gimpy.  When we first got this round of chicks, Gimpy was the biggest and had a hard time standing up.  Now Prim is a whole head and chest taller than the others.  She's either one big chick or a stinkin' rooster.  Only time will tell!

I was quite UNmotivated today...Luckily, my lovely partner was quite motivated!  While I sat in the sun on the computer and looked up various gardening-type websites while keeping her company, she tore up an old bed, cleaned the chicken coop and picked up dog poop!  My heroine!

Two of our five chickens excitedly searching for worms and other proteins unearthed in the tear up!

I did, however, find the motivation to make 21 flour tortillas from scratch!  YAY for tortillas with no hydrogenated fats (which are not only bad for you and your heart but will give me a wicked migraine)!  Then, I put some butter on one, added on some Hatch chile, garlic and salt and sat down (again) for a nice little snack.  A little piece of Heaven in my hand!  Hey, what can I say?  I can't be super motivated all the time!  A girl needs some down time!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

OK...so each spring, when I get my taxes back, I treat myself to some new clothes.  First off, I like new clothes.  They make me feel good.  New colors.  New designs.  It's like a reflection of spring in my clothes.  Or something. The process of trying them on, however, sucks.  The process, the lighting, the overheating from the take it off, put it on, take it off, put it on of it all pretty much sucks.  There's also the nagging little voice at the back of my skull saying, "Did you REALLY just spend THAT much money on those FEW items?!?"  Not that I shop at expensive places, we're talking Target and Old Navy as my regular stomping grounds and a couple hundred dollars each spring.  Even so, there is always a bit of buyers remorse.

Yesterday was different.  My just-turned-16-year-old-daughter wanted to go shopping in Albuquerque with her friend as part of her birthday celebration.  Our two stops would be Buffalo Exchange and one of the malls.  So, I set the intention to keep an open mind in Buffalo Exchange and NOT just look at the t-shirts this time.  Guess what I found?  Ready?  A dress, a skirt, a Beatles shirt, another shirt, another dress, a jacket, and a happy little place at the back of my skull saying, "WooHoo!!!".  Not only did I spend half of what I would normally spend in a regular store, but I also have the happiness of knowing that, in the process of getting myself some super cool new-to-me dudds, I am also helping to reduce my consumption of all the bad things it takes to produce any brand new item, while reusing an item that has it's own little history.  Triple score!

Now, I'm not saying that I will never again buy brand new items (in the interest of honestly, I did buy 3 new items at Old Navy yesterday...a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans and a super cute clearance PEACE sweater).  I'm not there yet.  However, I am very excited about the intention behind this new perspective I'm building!