A Few Lessons Learned

This was a rough year for us as far as homesteading due to the drought and prolonged heatwave in our neck of the woods, but we still managed to maintain in most areas and even slightly improve in others.  Experience is such a great teacher and we definitely learned a couple of things this past year.    

Expiration Dates  They're not set in stone, but there is sometimes a trade-off.  When we initially stocked up in December 2010, we were just guesstimating how much of any one item we would need for a year.  We had a pretty good start on the food storage but our goal was to beef it up to the point we had at least a 12 month supply of everything.  Well, we tended to over buy on a couple of things but so far it hasn't resulted in any waste.  The best example this year was store-bought ketchup.  I'm the only one that eats it, and I only eat it on certain things ...meat loaf and stuffed bell peppers are all I can think of right now.  But Yeoldfurt knows I don't like to eat those things without it, so he set the goal high to ensure I would have it when I wanted it.  Well, we apparently way overestimated because a year later, I have three bottles left that are a couple of months out of date.  They still smell fine and taste fine but it's no longer that bright 'ketchup red' color ...it's more the color of bottled bbq sauce, kind of reddish brown.  It won't go to waste as long as it seems edible, I don't really care what color it is.   But I've also noticed the plastic squeeze bottle it is packaged in has started to degrade.  It is apparently composed of two layers of plastic and they've sort of started to separate.  When you squeeze it and then let go, the outer layer returns to it's originally intended shape but the inner layer is much slower to go back into shape.  With three bottles still on the shelf and one in the fridge, I'm thinking I don't need to buy ketchup until possibly 2013!

Repurpose Value of Wood Ash   I knew you could make lye from wood ash and I knew it generally wouldn't hurt vegetation so could be spread on a lawn or garden.  But I had no idea it was actually very beneficial to compost pile.  Apparently, high acidity can be a problem in composting, slowing the decomposition process.  Wood ash helps to neutralize the acid, thereby facilitating faster decomposition.  I dumped a bucketful on our compost pile a week ago and turned everything over with a pitch fork this evening ...I can already see an improvement and it's only been a few days.  

Tweaking the Pantry Inventory List  We still use the spreadsheet that Yeoldfurt put together, but added some intermediate steps that make it easier to maintain and (hopefully) more consistently accurate.  I used to print it when I went shopping.  But being several pages long, that was cumbersome and a waste of paper.  Then I started just reviewing it before I went shopping and adding to the shopping list what items I thought we could afford to stock up on.  I still do that but now I also keep a small notepad, a pencil, and a Sharpie marker on the shelf in the pantry.  When I go down there to get one thing, I invariably come back with one or two other things ...spur of the moment.  So now I list what items I'm taking on the notepad as I gather them together so I can take a complete list back to the house with me.  Also, for each item I bring back, I do a quick count of how many are still remaining in storage, then write that number in parentheses next to the item on the list.  That way when I give the list to Yeoldfurt to update the spreadsheet, he can spot check the 'amount on hand' to make sure it's still accurate.  It's not a perfect system, but it's evolving into a pretty good one.

Making Pennies Squeal   I've always been frugal and budget-minded but circumstances the past few years have made me even more so.  If you asked me a year ago whether we were getting all the mileage we possibly could out of every dollar, I would have said yes with very little hesitation.  But we've found a couple of new ways to significantly stretch those pennies recently that make me wonder if there aren't more ways we just haven't discovered yet.  The biggest savings comes from Yeoldfurt and I being able to adjust our schedules so that we can carpool to our jobs 40 miles away.   With each of us driving separate vehicles 80 miles/day five days/week to and from our jobs, our fuel bill was equal to our mortgage payment ...it was outrageous!  But when the transmission went out in one of the vehicles, we adjusted our schedules for a week while the truck was in the shop and were able to get permission from both our bosses to keep our schedules that way.  By doing so, we cut our monthly fuel cost in half.  Over a year's time, we'll also save significantly on replacement tires and oil changes for the vehicle that sits in the driveway most days.  Conservatively, I estimate of our savings the first year to be approximately $5000.  We also started keeping a Walmart gift card with $100 balance on it and using that to buy gasoline.  Walmart's price is always the same or lower than any other stations in our area ...sometimes a dime or more lower.  By using the Walmart card to pay, we get an additional 10 cent per gallon discount.  I paid $2.80/gallon for regular last Friday.  I don't know about prices in your area, but around here, that's pretty darn good.  Since we use about 1400 gallons per year just driving back and forth to work, 10 cents per gallon is significant.  Of course, since we have three geriatric vehicles, all that money saved will probably go into mechanical repairs over the course of that same year ...but at least we'll have the money in savings to take care of those expenses when they come up.  

I'm sure there were other little bits of knowledge accumulated this year, but these were the ones that stood out to me when I was contemplating writing this post.  It seems to me that the intangible things we gain every year ...the knowledge, the skills, the little tricks that make every day tasks easier ...are the real bounty in homesteading. 

I hope the coming year is better all the way around.  I hope we have normal temperatures and rainfall so we can have a garden, fewer mechanical crises so we can get a break from diverting so much to vehicle repairs, and a decent man in the White House so we can as least slow the decimation of our economy, our country and our values ...maybe even begin to rebuild some of what the past four years has destroyed.  I don't know what the future holds, but I never want to become so discouraged that I no longer believe a bright future is possible.  So at the close of this year and hopefully the beginning of a better year, I leave you with this poem that says better than I can what I feel and hope for tomorrow.

Ladies, It's Time to Winterize

I'm not talking about your house, or your wardrobe either ...it's time to winterize your vehicles.  This post is being written mostly for ladies, from a lady's perspective since that's the only perspective I have.  Some of us are blessed with men who take care of all these things for us and some are on their own in this department.  Even if your partner takes care of vehicle maintenance, I think you should be knowledgeable enough to do for yourself too.  I'm of the opinion that if you drive it, you need to take care of it ...or at least see that it's taken care of. 

Yeoldfurt and I have a geriatric fleet decorating our driveway.  The odometers on our three vehicles are all well past the 100,000 mile mark and one of them is well over 200,000.  Maintenance is important with any vehicle but with older vehicles, it's critical.  Two drivers with three vehicles might seem like overkill to some but there's a method to this madness.  The big truck, a 2001 F250, is the only one of the three that can pull the stock trailer.  When you have livestock, that kind of truck is a necessity.  But that diesel engine gets lousy mileage even on the highway, and diesel is $3.75/gallon these days.  So other than a short trip to town once a week to keep the juices flowing, we only drive the big truck when we need to pull the trailer.

Diesel powered vehicles are cold sensitive and require a little extra attention when winter rolls around.  A fuel additive such as "Amsoil" helps, but it takes a little discipline to keep the ratio right.  An optimal 8 ounces of additive for every 25 gallons of fuel is hard to regulate unless you run the tank down before you refuel each time.  If you are in the habit of topping off your tank every time it gets down to about half, the ratio gets out of whack pretty fast, potentially causing other problems.  So even if that's your normal routine in summer months so you never get caught with an empty tank, it would be better in winter to run the tank down to at least the last quarter before using more additive.

Diesels have two big batteries under the hood and painful as it is, it's probably best to replace them at the same time.  One may crap out before the other, but batteries almost never crap out overnight.  They weaken over time and as the one battery has been getting weaker and weaker, more strain has been put on the other battery so it's far from equal to the new one you just put next to it.  I'm sure I'm on the minority side of that opinion but I'd rather be safe than sorry.  A lot depends on how far you drive, how remote your route is and what your options are going to be if you get stranded away from home because the batteries are too weak to start the truck.

One thing you can do to take care of the batteries you have is to use your plug in.  Every diesel I've ever owned or known of  has had an electrical plug tucked down inside the front grill.  The cord runs to a heater on the block of the engine.  The block heater provides just enough warmth to keep the fuel from gelling which makes starting so much easier in the morning.  You can start it while it's plugged in, but as a safety measure, I always unplug before I start the engine ...cuts down on the risk of driving off while still attached to the garage by the electrical cord.  I've seen it happen, though not to me or my truck ...thank goodness.  But I decided then and there I was going to take measures to ensure it didn't happen to me. 

Check the tire pressure when the temperatures drop too.  Tires that looked okay yesterday afternoon when it was in the 70's might look a little on the under-inflated side today when the high was only in the 50's.  A vehicle with over or under-inflated tires is far from safe on slick winter roads, so check your pressures when the seasons change and adjust them according to the PSI embossed on the sidewall of the tire.  We keep a cheap manual tire gauge in every glove box of every vehicle we own.  You're not always going to be at gas station when you think you have a tire pressure problem and I've never trusted the gauges at the 25-cents-for-air stations anyway.

Check your fluids, ladies.  It's not rocket science.  The reservoirs are marked with a minimum fill line.  If they're low or the fluid looks dirty, change it or take it to someone to have it changed.  Even your windshield wiper fluid should be topped off before winter.  If it's already raining outside, you might need to wash your windows to be able to see the road.  Ever had a big 18 wheeler blow by in the lane next to you and spatter mud and sludge all over your windshield?   Your wipers won't make much difference without a little boost from washer fluid.   

We had our first real norther blow through last Sunday.  I guess that's what got me on this subject.  The skies were clear and blue but there were gusts of icy wind that felt they went right through your clothes.  The horses were all frisky and the chickens only wanted to venture from the coop for a few minutes at a time.  While I was out taking care of the animals, I decided to do a little winterizing on the two vehicles that were still in the driveway.

Fall Vegetable Garden Class

The free class on Fall Vegetable Gardening I attended last Saturday was outstanding.  I loosely adhere to the old adage 'you get what you pay for' so I was not expecting all that much from a 'free' class, especially one offered by a retail business.  At most, I expected to get a few pointers and maybe hear about the latest gardening tool or product for this area.  Even though Producers is an ag co-op, they are still a retailer ...in the business of selling their wares to the public.  I half expected coupons to be handed out for discounts on those tools or products which, of course, would be available for purchase from the store hosting the 'free' class.  The skeptic in me always looks for a catch when something is offered for free.  I was pleasantly surprised on all fronts.  

I have been to Producers dozens of times in the five plus years we've lived in this area but this is the first time I was there on a Saturday when the free classes are offered.  I was surprised to find out I was only one of about a hundred people attending yesterday's class.  I had no idea attendance would be that high and I was amazed to see the lengths the store went to accommodate the attendees.  Large display racks were temporarily moved off to one side to make room for the rows of folding chairs.  Two tables were set up where you entered the area ...one with registration sign in sheets and a nine-page handout of the material that would be covered in the class and the other with several carafes of coffee and trays of cookies.  The store apparently goes to a lot of effort and expense to host these classes every week and I really didn't come away with the impression I had been to a sales pitch. 

One of the things I learned that we will be implementing this coming year is that it's far more beneficial to rest and improve your soil during July and August than to push for production during the two hottest months.  This part of Texas has relatively mild winters and it's entirely feasible most of the time to keep a garden going for nine to ten months out of the year.  But just because we can doesn't mean we should.  Gardens need time to rest, organic matter needs to be worked in to replenish depleted minerals and restore balance to the soil.  The speaker recommended cleaning out the garden at the end of June.  Remove the old crop, clear weeds and grasses and add approximately three inches of well-composted material.  Work the compost in by hand or with a tiller, then saturate the garden with water to a depth of at least four inches.  Let the water soak in, then saturate the ground again the next day and the day after that.  By the third day, you should be able to dig down 8 or 9 inches and still have very damp soil.   If the soil is not damp to that depth by the third day, you are not watering enough.  When it is damp to that depth, flood it one more time to the point you have standing water, then cover it with clear plastic and leave it covered until the first week in August.  The hot summer sun on the clear plastic will sterilize the saturated soil, killing any seeds, fungi or bugs that may be in it.  Even in a normal summer, the temperatures under the plastic will reach at least 160 degrees during the day.  That heat will help speed up the decomposition of the compost you just added.

The first week September, remove the plastic and 'fluff' the soil by hand or with a tiller.  Additional store-bought compost may be added at this time if necessary.  This is not the ideal time to add material from your home compost because you need to transplant seedlings to your fall garden by the middle of September and two weeks is just not enough time for typical home composted material to break down in the soil.   It is also not good to work horse or cow manure into the soil because it adds too much phosphorous and will stress your seedlings.

Mid- to late-September is the ideal time to transplant seedlings into the garden.  Most of us keep our thermostats set so that temperatures in our homes fluctuate very little between daytime and nighttime during the summer.  So if you started your seedlings yourself in an air-conditioned setting, it's best to move them to a shaded area in the yard for a few days before you transplant them into the garden so they can become acclimated to the more extreme outdoor temperature fluctuations between daytime and nighttime.

If you purchase seedlings for your vegetable garden, look for boxy, full-leaved specimens, rather than the tallest or the one that already shows flowers.  Height that is disproportionate to fullness is a plant's response to tight quarters and having to compete for sunlight.  Early flowering is not a sign a vigor, it's a sign of stress ...literally according to Dr Masabni, the plant is saying, 'OMG, I'm going to die soon ...I must reproduce!'  That generated some chuckles, as you can imagine, but he's right.  The base instinct of all life is to survive and reproduce.  Plants are no exception.  

If these kinds of classes are offered through your local ag co-op or the county extension office, I urge you to take advantage of them.  All of the classes won't be relevant to your situation, but take advantage of the ones that are.  Knowledge is something we need to stock up on occasionally too.  

Continuing Ed Tomorrow

Producers is the name of the big feed co-op store in Bryan.  Their advertising slogan is 'Everything Ag' and that's a pretty fitting description of what you can find there.  In addition to all the normal things you'd expect at a feed store, they offer free one hour seminars on Saturdays, covering a variety of subjects that would interest  most any farmer, rancher or homesteader.  The seminars are held at 11:00 on Saturday mornings in a small section of the store that's set up like a casual den ...complete with fireplace and big comfy chairs.  The subject this weekend is Fall Vegetable Gardening and the speaker is Professor Joe Masahni, an Extension Vegetable Specialist from Texas A&M. 

I don't know if I'll learn anything new in the class, but I'm pretty sure it won't be a waste of my time.  I happen to think that adding to your own store of knowledge is an essential part of being prepared.  The timing for this class is great and the price is perfect.  We were just talking last week about whether to plant a fall garden this year and what we should grow and since the class is free ...well, you just can't beat free! 
 
There is always a list of errands that need to be done on Saturdays and this weekend is no different.  The oil needs changing in the little truck, a trash run has to be made to the local collection station and now I have this class I want to attend in Bryan.  Yeoldfurt will be tied up at the the Appleseed shoot in Millican all day tomorrow and again on Sunday,  so I'll take care of whatever needs to be done this weekend. He'll load up tonight and leave bright and early for the shoot in the morning.  I'll be leaving an hour or so behind him so I can be first in line at the Kwik Kar in Caldwell when they open.   I should be back home by 9:00, giving me plenty of time to make the trash run and start the weekend laundry before I need to leave for the class in Bryan.

After the class, I'll gas up at the HEB in Bryan because it's always 10-15 cents cheaper than the stations in Caldwell.  Then I have a short list of items to pick up while I'm at HEB and I should be back home by 2:00.  Yeoldfurt will call me when he's heading home after the shoot, but I don't expect to hear from him until at least 5:00.  That gives me three or four hours to finish the laundry and have a nice dinner for him when he gets home.  I've told him he's off the roster as far as feeding the critters or any other chores this weekend.  He's managed to finagle a day off work on Sunday so that he can attend both days of the shoot and I just want him to enjoy himself.  There are plenty of weekends that he has shouldered all the responsibilities for me so I could go visit the granddaughter in San Antonio.  This is my opportunity to return the favor. 

Passing Judgment

A friend put up a post several months back on 'armchair preppers' which, when I first read it, struck me as a little judgmental. Who are we to know the true reality of another's circumstances, or their means, or even their actions? But she made some valid observations which I've been pondering ever since.  Yeah, sometimes I think things to death and, depending on how deep the subject is, that can take a while.

One thing I've noticed is there are a whole lot of another type of prepper out there ...the loud and proud but standing in the back type.  They have a soapbox and they're not afraid to use it.  I call them the Loud and Proud Crowd, or LPCs for short.  They usually have quite a few followers.  Not sure if it's because they all agree with all the viewpoints, or just enjoy the show when the LPC gets wound up.

You know the ones. They have all the answers. They have it all figured out and if everyone would just do what THEY say, this whole runaway train that's in Washington DC would get back on track and we'd be America again.  Their own hands always seem to be tied, of course.  They are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place ...powerless to follow their own advice because of this or that in their personal circumstance.  But I thought the very basic premise of prepping was having a proactive, take-the-bull-by-the-horns approach to life.  It's the goose-gander conundrum.  What's good for the one seems only to be good for the other if it's convenient to be so.   

I know the world is full of all kinds of people and every one of them has their own set of circumstances and their own set of options and limitations based on their abilities or finances or even their geographic location.  I know that what Yeoldfurt and I consider a problem might be a total non-issue for others.  I know that how we decide to solve a particular problem might be the absolute last route someone else would take in our circumstances.  To each his own.  No one knows our needs, our abilities, our resources and our limitations better than we do.  I try to only offer advice if it's asked and I make a concerted effort not to be offended if the advice is declined or ignored.  I firmly believe we are each in charge of our destiny and, as such, we each own full responsibility for our lives and well-being, which brings me to a tangent line of thought ...welfare mentality.

There is an entitlement mentality in this country that started with food stamps and medicaid and has morphed into Earned Income Credit (tax-free cash grants to households under certain income levels), housing assistance (HUD) and daycare assistance (CCMS).  A lot of the households taking advantage of these programs are two-income households that are simply living above their means.  They use food stamps to buy their food so they can use more of their paycheck to buy what they want ...booze, cigarettes, in some cases illicit drugs.  They jump through hoops every three months with government paperwork so they can get subsidies on their rent and, again, have more money to spend on things they want like acrylic nails or fancy cell phones or a new tattoo.

In my opinion, all of this gimme-gimme-gimme-you-owe-me attitude for decades is one of the main reasons we're having government-mandated healthcare shoved down our throats today.  Enough of the general population is finally indoctrinated to believe government welfare is the norm.  Instead of only applying for assistance where there is real need, many people are applying simply because it's available and they know how.  Word gets around, you know?

It's sad for our country because, contrary to popular belief, there is no magical money tree ...the government can only dole out what it first extracts from our pockets. And it's even sadder for the children growing up in homes where welfare has been the norm for several generations.  What lofty aspirations can they possibly have? 

I am grateful to have grown up in a home where my parents worked hard to provide for our needs, took good care of what we had, and saved for the things the family wanted.  We lived within our means every day and when the family could afford to have or do something special, it was that much more special and memorable.  I hope Yeoldfurt and I are neither 'armshair preppers' nor fall in with the 'LPC' types.  I hope we are just one household doing the best we can to better ourselves and our circumstances with what resources we have available. I hope that if the priorities we set and the decisions we make about how to handle different things differ from those of our readers, that they won't interpret the differences as judgment on our part.  It's not my intention to pass judgment on anyone.  You do what works for you, we'll do what works for us and we'll both accept full responsibility for the outcome.

Let There Be LIGHT

The house we live in was built in the mid-80's and has a very 80's style galley kitchen with a double bulb fluorescent light fixture centered overhead.  For the past several months ...okay, maybe the past year or so ...the kitchen light has been 'moody.'  One of three things would happen when you flipped the switch ...bright light immediately flooded the kitchen from the overhead fixture which was ideal,  or semi-bright light immediately flooded the kitchen because one of the bulbs seemed to be functioning at about half-capacity, or a dull candle-like glow immediately flooded the kitchen because both bulbs seemed to be functioning at half-capacity.  If either of the last two things happened, I learned that just leaving it alone for long enough, the bulbs would suddenly come to life and things would be bright again.  As time wore on, the occurrence of the first thing where flipping the switch resulted in immediate bright light from both bulbs became more and more rare.  But since it still worked sometimes, and there were always things on my list that were not working at all, I have just lived with it all this time.  I've always believed in the rule you don't fix what ain't broke.  And in the interest of stretching a dollar, I've tweaked it in recent years to you don't fix what ain't completely broke.  

That finally happened a few weeks ago with the kitchen lights.  Both bulbs just gave up the ghost completely.  With the hours we've both been working and other more pressing commitments on the weekends, it took me a while to get around to replacing them.   Honestly, I kind of thought Yeoldfurt would fix them.  He's gotten after me from time to time for fixing things or devising a plan to fix things that he's already got on his list.  For whatever reason, I just thought replacing the bulbs was on his list somewhere.  So several weeks went by with me cooking with just the hood light over the stove and ambient light from the adjacent rooms.  It was working okay but I did miss having good lighting.  So I decided to drop a hint by taking the plastic light diffuser cover down and washing it one Sunday while he was at work.  It's four feet long so I took it outside to clean it up and left it laying across the wheelbarrow by the back door to dry.  I thought it would serve as a subtle hint to Yeoldfurt that the kitchen light was ready for new bulbs. 

He noticed it when he came home and we talked a little about whether we had any spare bulbs stashed in the garage or one of the shops, but it turns out we didn't so the conversation really didn't go anywhere.  I had to run errands today ...get the car inspected, pick up cat/dog/chicken food in town and go to the bank so I decided to stop at the local hardware store and pick up a couple of bulbs.  It took me all of ten minutes to snap the old ones out and snap the new ones in.  I put the light diffuser cover back on the fixture and flipped the switch.  IMMEDIATE BRIGHT LIGHT flooded the kitchen ...oh, it was grand!  Such a simple thing but you sure do miss it when it's gone. 

I went down the hall to Yeoldfurt's office and said, "High five me, honey ...we have LIGHT in the kitchen again!"  Made him laugh.  He was in the kitchen a few minutes later and said, "You know ...I would have done that for you weeks ago, but you mentioned you were going to do it and I didn't want to take over your project.  You told me once that I have a tendency to take over your projects sometimes and I'm trying to be better."  Ugh!  Then I laughed and told him I had taken so long to get it done because I thought it was on his project list and didn't want to get in his way ...but that I had gotten tired of cooking in the dark. 

Guess we need to work on communication.  Subtle hints might work in some scenarios but sometimes a simple question ...'is this on my list or yours?' ...might be the better way to go! 

Update on Vacuum Sealing

I brought all my beans and rice up from food storage this afternoon, divided them into meal-sized portions and vacuum sealed them in clean canning jars.    It was a little work washing and drying all the jars but it was worth it because now instead of knowing I have so many pounds of whatever kind of dried beans or so many pounds of rice in storage, I now know how many meals I have of those things in storage. 

Whether quarts or pints, I only filled each jar half full of whatever I was putting in it because when I cook them this fall and winter, the amount that's in the jar now will still fit in the jar after it's cooked.   It was suggested to me to fill the jars completely before sealing to minimize how many jars I had to wash and dry and make more efficient use of the storage space in the jar.  But right now it's more important to me to know how many meals I can get out of what I have stored.  Filling the jars with only as much as they would hold after the contents are cooked gives me a better idea of whether my stores are adequate.

I lost a whole 8-pound bag of pinto beans in this process.  A good number of the beans in the bag were visibly moldy and they smelled 'off' ...so they all went to the compost pile.  Losing 8 pounds of anything is a shame, but it just convinces me all the more that vacuum sealed in glass containers is the way to go.  

It's just the two of us here most of the time, so a quart jar of red beans & rice is a meal.  Filling the quart jar only half-full, each one ended up with 1-1/3 cups of Red Beans and 2/3 cup of rice.  I ended up with 19 quarts which translates to 19 meals for us.  Fresh chopped onion and Cajun spices will be added when I cook the red beans and rice so that when I pressure can them, they will be ready to eat.  When I serve one for dinner, I'll only need to cook a little sausage and cornbread and Yeoldfurt will be happy.

Pintos and great northern beans were sealed in pint jars because they will be consumed as side dishes more than full meals.  I ended up with 24 pints of those or 24 meals worth.  Once all the beans were in jars, I filled quart and pint jars all the way to the top with what was left of the rice.  I ended up with 7 quarts and 16 pints.  Served as a side dish, that much rice translates to 60 meals worth for us.    

The vacuum sealer attachment to the Foodsaver worked very well with the wide-mouth jars ...a success every time.  When I ran out of clean wide-mouth jars and tried to seal the regular-mouth jars, I had a little trouble at first but not that much.  I had one jar that seemed to seal but then 'popped' a few minutes later and was a failure.  When I removed the loose lid, I could see rice powder residue on the gasket ...so it was my own fault.  I got a clean lid and it sealed, no problem.  I did have to double-load when doing the regular-mouth jars.  I put one lid on the jar and then set a second lid on top of it, then put the vacuum sealer over the jar.  Double-loaded like that, when I removed the vacuum sealer, the bottom lid stayed with the jar and the second lid was still in the vacuum sealer.  Not a big deal. 

This method of storage won't be for everyone but considering the 8 pounds of Pinto Beans I had to throw in the compost pile today, I would say it's an improvement for us.  It was worth the effort as far as I'm concerned.  When I'm ready to start pressure canning again this fall, I can bring up only as many jars as I want to do that day.   My pressure canner will hold 7 quarts, so if I only want to process one batch, that's all I will be bringing up from storage. 

Improving the Process

Spare time is as hard to come by as spare change, so whenever I figure out a way to make a necessary chore more efficient, I get happy.  Since I'm very much a rookie at most of this food preservation stuff, just about everything is 'new to me' so I tend to get happy a lot these days.

We have had issues in the past with things 'hatching' in our rice and I know the same thing can happen with beans.  The bug larvae are already present in the rice and beans before it's harvested and, unless you do something to prevent it, they hatch later.  You can freeze the product for several days when you first bring it home but we don't have a separate freezer so finding space to do that would be an issue.  Storing the product in an oxygen-free container is a way to suffocate the larvae but since we store much more than we can use at one time, we would have to constantly re-seal and remove the oxygen.  So I have been searching for an easy and efficient way to overcome the problem.

I was reading a post recently at my friend, Frugal Faulein's blog  where she was talking about processing just one or two jars at a time of a new recipe to make sure it's a winner with your family.  Her suggestion was to also process some dried beans at the same time to make good use the extra space in the canner.  That got me to thinking about all the dried beans and rice down in storage that I need to process.  Right now, we have about 30 pounds of dried beans and at least 15 pounds of rice in storage that I want to process in pint and quart jars for ready to eat meals.  Then I thought about how hot it is and started dreading heating up the kitchen with a 90-minute batch of canned food in the processor.  I haven't pulled the pressure canner off the shelf yet this year.  There's just something about triple digit heat that makes me not want to think about canning.

That's when I remembered the gadget we bought from Foodsaver to vacuum seal canning jars.   

This weekend, I will be filling dry sterilized jars half full with beans, rice, or a combination of beans and rice, then vacuum seal them for processing this fall when the weather is cooler.  Sealed in clean glass jars, the food will be safe from varmints of any kind and with all of the oxygen removed, they will stay fresh for much longer ...and, as an added bonus ...nothing will be able to hatch!

When I am ready to pressure can them in a few months, I will open however many jars I want to process, then  rinse, soak and pre-boil the contents in one big batch.  The last fifteen minutes that the beans are boiling, the lids and rings will be boiling in a separate pot of water.   That process will take about an hour and a half which is just enough time for me to run the jars through the sterilization cycle on my dishwasher.  By the time the beans have boiled for one hour, the sterilized jars will be just cool enough to handle.

I can move the pot of beans off to a cool burner and put the pressure canner on the hot burner to start heating up.  The lid will be off and the rack and four inches of water will be in the bottom.  While the water in the canner is heating up, I would place a couple of rings of fresh onion and whatever seasonings I want to use in the bottom of each jar, and then add hot beans, leaving the recommended one inch of headspace.  Each rim will be wiped carefully, the lids and rings placed on the jars, then the jars go into the canner.

Following the specific directions for my canner, the pint jars will be processed for 75 minutes and quart jars will be processed for 90 minutes.  Start to finish, it should take about three hours to prepare, pre-boil, pack and process the beans ...a little less if I'm processing pints, a little more if I'm processing quarts.  But during the hour the beans are pre-boiling and the 75 to 90 minutes that they're processing, I will be free to go do other things.

This may not be a new idea at all to you canning experts out there.  But as I said, I'm still a rookie at food preservation and time is one of the scarcest commodities of all around here.  Efficient ways to store both food and canning jars is another issue I wrestle with from time to time.  So having figured out a way to improve in both areas, I am already getting happy.

Few Things ...

...can dishevel a house quicker or more thoroughly than two grandsons descending for a whirlwind weekend visit.  They were only here three days and two nights but the only room that looks good this morning is the room they slept in because ...GOOD BOYS that they are, they made their beds and picked up their room every morning before wandering out to the kitchen for breakfast.  They rode the horses several times, made a serious dent in Yeoldfurt's stash of 22 cartridges, and ate just about everything that wasn't nailed down.  If we are able to arrange for a week long visit in the future, I can see we're going to have to stock up a lot more than we did for this short visit! 

The oldest is a natural with a rifle, nailing almost every target he went after.   He has outgrown the Cricket 22 we bought a couple of years ago and was shooting my singleshot bolt action that I inherited from my dad.  That rifle has been through three generations so far and is now in the hands of the fourth.

The youngest is eager to learn and will be as good as his brother with a little practice.  Both boys are right-handed but left-eye dominant.  The oldest has figured this out and shoots left-handed to give himself a better aim through the sights.  The youngest still insists he has to shoot right-handed which means he throws his head way to the right trying to get his left eye lined up with the sights.  He'll figure it out and when he does, he'll be a crack shot like his brother.  

The youngest is my can't-get-enough-saddle-time-cowboy right now.  Even the triple digit temperatures didn't keep him from wanting to ride at least once every day.   He's fearless regardless of the size of the horse he's on and I can see I'm going to have to watch what I let him see me do on the horses.  We were riding separate horses the first evening and he saw me kick my feet out of the stirrups and jump off when I wanted to get down.  He figured that's the way it's done so off he jumped.  I turned around just in time to see him land on his feet and grin at me.  He's barely three feet tall and the saddle he was sitting was five feet off the ground.  He must have noticed the panicked look on my face and said, 'What?' Silly boy ...I'll have to watch what I do when he's looking. 

The youngest is still lightweight enough for our kid-horse, Katie, to pack around.  I am right there with him for moral support and to get the horse saddled up but Katie is the one teaching the youngun to ride.  She has a bum knee now so we don't let anyone over 50 pounds on her back.  Katie is in hog heaven with a kid on her back.  That horse would positively have her feelings hurt if kids are around she didn't get ridden and, believe me, there's nothing more pitiful than watching a 1000-pound horse pout!  The oldest grandson and our grand niece both learned to ride on Katie and we still have the 9 month old granddaughter coming up through the ranks.  But after all the grandkids are too heavy for her, we may have to borrow some pint-size neighbor kids to keep Katie feeling useful.  

And this is how I found the boys every morning.  Worn out from the activities the day before, resting up for whatever the new day would bring.   Short visit, but good times.  

Back to the Real World Tomorrow

Vacation is over after today, it's back to the grindstone tomorrow morning.  I accomplished most of what I hoped to over the past few days.  Several small indoor projects are complete, I got the raised bed weeded and the yard mowed today and ran the last of the errands for the week.  In retrospect, I've been pretty darn busy these three 'vacation' days.  Spending a mere eight hours at my desk job tomorrow might actually feel like a walk in the park by comparison.  That feeling may wear off after the first day though.  Good thing for me there are only two work days left this week and then it's a three-day holiday weekend. 

I added a couple of new sites to my blog roll recently.  There's Stephen at Standing Outside Looking In and BlueEyedBaby at I Wish On Shooting Stars who just happens to be Redneck's daughter.  For a young lady just out of high school, this girl has got a real good head on her shoulders.   These are all good folks, worth checking out.  We all tend to collect like-minded people on our blog rolls.  Maybe on some level, we're all seeking confirmation for our own views.  But new folks bring new perspectives even if they hold the same or similar opinions as our own.  I hope you'll check them out. 

 

Mini-Vacation

I'm off today, tomorrow and Wednesday but the 'To Do List' is long.  There are only two projects on the agenda today ...really only one project but it needs to be done in two different rooms.  The guestroom and my office are in desperate need of a complete overhaul. De-junking, deep-cleaning and reorganizing.  None of that sounds like fun to me, but it has to be done. 

The guestroom hasn't been occupied by an actual guest in a long time, so the two beds have slowly accumulated 'stuff' that just needs to find a home.  When I re-vamped our bedroom a couple of months ago, the guestroom became a handy place to move things while I painted.  Somehow after the painting project was done, there were still a lot of things laying around the guestroom.  Exhaustion or my lazy streak won out and I just closed the door and forgot about it ...until recently.  Now our grandsons are coming to visit 4th of July weekend and the guestroom is in a shambles!  I pick them up Friday after work, so this project is a priority. 

The other room to be overhauled is my office.  Just another catch-all space in the house.  We refer to it as my office, but it's also my sewing machine and where we set up the dehydrator.  It was originally intended as a formal dining room by the couple that built this house and there is a wonderful walk-in pantry in one corner.  It's wonderful in that it's 5 feet deep by 6 feet wide, with four 12-inch deep shelves on three of the walls.  Great for storing all kinds of things ...a nightmare if the shelves are full but disorganized.  Unfortunately, that's how I would have to describe it right now ...a disorganized nightmare.   My hope is to designate each of the three walls for a specific function.  One wall would hold all of my equipment such as the two canners, the Foodsaver, canning jars/lids, and various empty plastics that I can use for food storage.  Another wall would would hold all of my sewing and craft materials.  The third wall would become the short term food storage.  

Right now, we keep a only few days worth of staples in the kitchen cupboards because space is limited in the kitchen.  The rest is kept in the food storage area we built in the shed down the hill.  I make an average of three trips to retrieve this or that from food storage during the week.  That doesn't sound like a lot of hassle but there are days when my feet are screaming and one more trip down the hill would just do me in.  So my hope is to designate about a third of this walk-in pantry for it's intended purpose ...a pantry.  I would stock these shelves with enough of our most commonly used staples to last about a month.  What gets put on the pantry shelves would come from what's already in storage in the shed.  I would restock it about once a month, again pulling from the food storage in the shed.  New groceries brought into the house would get date marked and put in storage in the shed so we would be able to keep everything rotated.  It will sure make things easier on me for those days when I just can't make it down the hill but it will also ultimately make more space in storage so we could possibly expand our current 12-month by at least an extra month. 

Tomorrow ...Day Two of this Mini-Vacation ...I'll be gone all day.  I need to get the oil changed in two vehicles and get an inspection on one of them.  That may not seem like a lot but it will pretty much take the whole day because of logistics.  When Yeoldfurt leaves for work tomorrow morning, I'll follow him in another vehicle.  We'll leave one of them off at the shop when they open at 8:00 and I'll use the other one to drive Yeoldfurt the rest of the way in to his job.  It's another 20 miles so it will take me an hour or so to drop him off and get back to the shop.  Hopefully by then, the first vehicle will be done and I can leave them the second vehicle.  The second one will take longer because there's a burned out tail light to be replaced and then the inspection.  The shop, like anywhere else, tends to get busier as the day wears on.  By the time I drop the second vehicle off, half a dozen other customers may already be ahead of me in line.  So I'll a few hours hanging out at the courthouse with my old work buddies until the second one is done. 

In other words, I will be totally not productive, just goofing off and killing time as far as projects around the house go.  When the second vehicle is ready, I'll go pay the bill and pick up both sets of keys, then head off in the direction of Yeoldfurt's job.  It will probably be two or three hours before he gets off, but I there are plenty of places to kill time in that neck of the woods too.   

Yard work is the big project for Wednesday.  The three inches of rain we got last week has really transformed things.  Our yard has been brown and crunchy for weeks but is now green and growing.  I hope to get the yard mowed, the raised bed weeded and the shed branches down to the burn pile.  I much prefer yard work to house work, which is why I have to save the yard work for last.  One thing would lead to another and I would never get around to the house work.  So I don't dare start the yard work unless and until both of my indoor projects are done.  

So far, it's not sounding much like a vacation, is it?  But I had my 'play time' earlier this weekend.  While Yeoldfurt was off at the blog shoot in Lockhart, I was driving to San Antonio for an overnight with my daughter.  First things first, I spent some serious cuddle time with my little granddaughter, Bella, Saturday morning.  She and her mom had a commitment that afternoon and I had a wedding to attend so it was only a few hours, but delightful for me.  The bride at the wedding I attended is the daughter of one of my best friends.  Her mom and I have known each other for more than 30 years and I was glad I was able to share that moment with her.  It was a lot of 'special' to fit into one day. 

My daughter is in the choir and her husband plays bass in the Praise Band at their church, so they always go early and attend both services on Sundays.  I went to the early service and kept Bella with me instead of putting her in the nursery ...a little extra cuddle time for Grandma.  I passed Bella back to her parents and said my goodbyes after the early service, then drove 30 miles out to Boerne to visit another dear friend.  I've only known this lady for a few years, but it seems like we were friends as soon as we met.  She happens to be my son-in-law's grandmother which is how we met.  That makes us 'family' now too, a double blessing for me. 

My desk at work will be knee-deep when I get back on Thursday but I'm glad I took this time off.  Even if I only spend two of the five days playing, getting a few things is its own reward. 

Making Popcorn Chicken

Sorry, this is not a recipe post for that delectable bits of fried chicken. This is about training chickens.

Can you really 'train' a chicken? Probably not. That would require a bit more brain power than the little peckers have at their disposal. But it's pretty easy to condition them because they have one big driving motivation in life ...FOOD. If they're awake and not laying an egg or 'making more chickens' they're scratching around for food. They will taste test anything. Since you have probably been scattering food for them since they were fluffy yellow chicks, they long ago figured out that whatever drops from your hand is probably food.

With the shortened daylight hours during winter, our hens didn't get as much yard time as they had become accustomed to, certainly not as much as they wanted.  Most days, Yeoldfurt let them out mid- to late-morning before he left for work and I was home in time to put them back up before dark. On days when I knew I would be getting home after dark, they had to stay cooped up all day and they didn't like it. They must have some brain power because they always remembered being cooped up for the day and were always twice as hard to run back into the coop for a day or two afterward.

Herding chickens is probably easier than herding cats, but not by much.  We only had three hens last winter.  Two of them hang together and they're usually fairly easy. But one of them is a rebel and always makes a break at the last minute. Then the trick becomes can you time the opening of the door just right so that the wayward hen goes IN and the other two STAY in. Not always easy. After a full day at work, a long commute and plenty of other chores on the list, chasing chickens is not my idea of fun. So I came up with a plan.

I happen to a have a 28 count box of microwave popcorn that we bought at Sam's Club years ago. It's so far out of date, I am surprised it still pops ...but it does. My microwave usually does a very good job on the microwaveable popcorn but every once in a while a bag gets scorched. I am pretty sure it's because the popcorn is out of date and stale, parts of it are probably dried out.  But the hens didn't care.  If you shook a bag of popcorn, all three of them came running.  This year, we added four new pullets.  Herding seven hens is probably a little more challenging than herding three ...so the popcorn trick should come in handy this winter. 

For Simplicity Sake

The picture you see at the top of this blog is of a refrigerator magnet that Yeoldfurt brought me after one of his business trips.  It's a cartoon caricature of a horse 'exiting Stage Left' as it were, with a female holding on for dear life at the end of the lead rope.  She looks surprisingly calm, even happy, considering the predicament she seems to be in.  The words overlaying the picture are 'Woman Who Runs With Horses.'  Yeoldfurt brought it home to me and said he thought of me when he saw it.  When I made those words the name on my blog, I did not realize they would be my 'handle' every time I left a comment anywhere.  I know it's a mouthful.   Occasionally, people who respond to my comments address me as 'Woman' but most go with "WWRWH.'  Believe me, I know it's a mouthful.

So tonight, I decided to simplify things ...for all of us.  I have made many blog friends in the two years I've been blogging and in those circles, I am known as HossBoss, or simply HB.  I'm not sure when that happened or who gave me the name ...heck, it might even have been me!  Maybe it was when we started going into chat in the early days and I used it as a handle ...even I find WomanWhoRunsWithHorses a bit cumbersome to type out!  But the name 'HossBoss' stuck.  Tonight, I decided to make it official and have changed it on my blogger account.  So if any of you see 'HossBoss' leaving comments on your posts ...it's just me, WWRWH!

Manisagna is Born!

Yeoldfurt has been under the weather since Saturday and has mostly had just chicken noodle soup for supper these past few days.  He's finally on the mend and ready for some real food again, so I asked him this morning if he'd like me to make manicotti.  He loves manicotti so I got an enthusiastic thumbs up at the suggestion.   After all, it's comprised of his three all time favorite food groups ...meat, cheese and pasta!

When I got home this afternoon, I started digging through the kitchen.  Other than angel hair, spaghetti, flat noodles and elbow macaroni, we don't stock a twelve-month supply of pastas.  I could have sworn I bought a box of manicotti pasta last week but it was nowhere to be found.  All I had were four manicotti shells.  What to do??

While I was digging for the missing box of manicotti, I came across a few extra lasagna noodles in a ziploc bag.  Then I had an idea.  Manicotti (the way I make it) and lasagna are SO similar ...why not combine them into one dish?  And that's how Manisagna came to be ....

I put a layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a 7 x 12 rectangular baking dish.  At one end, I put my four little manicotti shells stuffed with the soft cheese, parmesan and egg mixture.   At the other end, I layered lasagna noodles over the sauce, followed by the soft cheese/egg mixture, followed by shredded mozzarella.  It took three layers on the lasagna side to make it the same height as the manicotti side.  Then I poured the remaining sauce evenly over the top and covered the whole thing with a final layer of shredded mozzarella.  It's been in the oven at 350 degrees for about ten minutes now and it's already smelling good.  I'll make a tossed salad and in another hour or so, we'll sit down to a nice supper.

While we're on the subject of baked pasta dishes, I never boil my pasta before assembling the dish.  I used to and I remember what a headache it was to get the pasta cooked perfectly, then get it cool enough to handle but still hot enough not to stick together.  Not easy.

I don't remember how I discovered this, but somewhere along the way I started assembling lasagna with uncooked pasta.  It was SO much easier to spread the soft cheese/egg mixture evenly on the dry lasagna noodles.  Literally every aspect of the assembly process was easier.  The first time I did it, I assembled the layers to make lasagna, then covered it and left it in the refrigerator over night.  I thought the pasta would absorb some of the juices overnight and soften up.  Then I set it on the counter for 30 minutes the next day to come to room temperature, then baked it at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, as normal.  It was wonderful.  Later on, I discovered leaving it overnight in the refrigerator was not a necessary step.  So now I just assemble and put it in the oven and it always comes out fine.

These days you can buy 'oven ready' lasagna noodles in the grocery stores.  They are shaped slightly different and have shallow ridges (like Ruffles) running the long way on the noodles and they are about twice the price of 'normal' lasagna noodles.  But the ingredients lists are exactly the same.   What a rip-off, huh?

So if you're still boiling the noodles when you make lasagna, please try this method next time you make lasagna.  You may be skeptical the first time, but you'll be a believer after you try it.  And if you think spreading soft cheese/egg mixture is easier on unboiled lasagna noodles, just wait until you see how much easier it is to stuff the manicotti when it's not pre-boiled. 

Fair Warning

Be wary any time you contemplate the purchase of anything where the words 'easy to install' are boldly printed on the packaging and instructions.  Just know going in that some key component will be left off of the list of items contained in the package, or some critical step in the installation process will be skimmed over in the instructions.  It's a given. 

In the days before the Internet, you were left to your imagination and ingenuity to work around these little problems.  At least now there is usually a web address listed somewhere on the packaging and, if you're fortunate, the web address will have additional instructions and sometimes a video demonstration of the installation process.  If you're not so fortunate, well ...you can always fall back on your imagination and ingenuity. 

I purchased two sets of 'easy to install' roman shades for our living room last week.  I was initially impressed with the instructions because they included a paper template you could cut out and tape to the wall in order to mark the screw holes precisely for the hardware.   I've used homemade paper templates for such tasks for years and was impressed to see a manufacturer include one with the instructions.  I read the instructions.  Seemed reasonably clear.  English might not have been the first language of the person that wrote these instructions, but other than a couple grammatical errors, the steps seemed logical and fairly clear. 

The instructions started with a section titled 'Carton Components' which clearly listed each item, the quantity included and a diagram for easy identification.  The items listed were 2 end caps, 2 mounting brackets, 1 shade assembly, 6 screws, 6 drywall anchors, 1 wand clip, and 1 wand.  Yup, all there. 

There was a separate section titled 'Additional Tools Needed' which listed only three items ...a Phillips screw driver, power drill and tape measure.  So far, so good. I gather my tools and move on to the actual instructions.

Step one:  "Slide end of wand assembly over spring in shade assembly. Tighten the screw one quarter turn past when it stops."  Okay...

First thing I notice is the screw is tiny ...and black ...impossible to actually see if it's a slot or a Phillips head.  Use the old 'touch and feel' method ...definitely not a slot.  Go get smallest Phillips screw driver I own (think eyeglass repair) and proceed to turn screw ...and turn and turn and turn some more.  Screw is turning, not tightening.  Grrr. 

Re-read instructions.  No clues there.  Re-read packaging material. A-ha ...a web address.  Go to computer and log onto website.  Oh good, there's a link for a five minute installation video ...this is encouraging.  If the 'how to' video is only  five minutes, how hard can this be?  Now we might get somewhere.  The first two minutes of the video is a sales pitch on all the virtues of their product.  Yeah, yeah, yeah ...get to the installation part!

And there it is.  The missing piece of the puzzle. She is using an Allen wrench to tighten the screw on the rod assembly ...and she refers to it as 'included' in the packaging.  What?!  What wrench?   I pause the video and go back to dig through the packaging.  It wasn't with all the other hardware, clips and brackets.  And then I see it ....taped discretely to the bottom edge of the shade.  All the other small components ...screws, drywall anchors, clips and caps had been packaged separately in a little cardboard box that was plenty big enough to hold the wrench too.  Why they taped it to the bottom of the shade, I will never know.   

Mission finally accomplished and I guess all's well that ends well.  It just baffles me though that in an age where product labeling is so highly regulated in all other areas, there are apparently no minimal guidelines a company has to follow before they are allowed to use the words 'EASY TO INSTALL' on their products. 

Chicken ... Is It What's for Dinner?

Soon and very soon, two of our three hens will be on the menu if they don't start laying again.  All three of them are Production Reds which are a cross on the Rhode Island Red and are supposedly very good layers.  We bought them as day old chicks in April of 2009.  They started producing eggs at about five months of age and were very consistent layers for the first year, not even slacking up for winter in 2009.  We were getting eighteen to twenty-one eggs a week, every week the first twelve months.  But all three of them started slacking off in December of 2010 and production dropped down to a total of only about  ten eggs per week. Now two of the hens seem to have stopped laying altogether.  The one hen that is still producing lays an egg almost every day but neither of the other two have produced an egg in over a week. 

There are certain health issues that can cause a hen to stop laying but these birds are alert and healthy.  They might just be spent as far as egg production.  If that's the case, I'm afraid they're headed for the freezer this fall.  That's the way it is with livestock that's raised for food.  These are not pet chickens. We coddle them and take good care of them and enjoy their little chicken personalities ...but they are still livestock raised for food.  If they are no longer able to provide eggs, they will provide meat. 

We knew this would happen eventually but were not expecting it until next summer.  Yeoldfurt and I were both a little disappointed to only get about eighteen months worth of egg production from the Production Reds.  So we decided to try another breed and bought four Barred Plymouth Rock chicks from a different source this year.  We lost one of the new chicks to a snake in the chicken coop last week and I think one of the remaining three is a rooster.  We will keep the rooster for a while and try our hand at raising some chicks ourselves and the two new pullets should begin laying by August or September.  But we may not have any eggs to sell between now and then since we are only getting six to seven eggs per week now. 

Yesterday I got a lead on a guy that has chicks available for a reasonable price so we'll go check him out next Saturday.  The chicks are cross-breeds (Rhode Island Red x Americana) and should lay muliticolored eggs when they're mature ...green, blue, white and lighter shades of brown.  He has some young Rhode Island Red hens that are ready to start laying but those are little more expensive.  I'm not sure what we'll come home with but it's always nice to have a new source. 

In the meantime, the one hen that is still laying has apparently put her stamp of approval on the new nest boxes Yeoldfurt built yesterday.  She laid an egg in one of the compartments today ...good girl, Red!!

. 
The old 'nest boxes' were five-gallon buckets laid on their sides on a raised shelf about six inches above the ground.  Two of the snakes we've killed in the coop this year were in one of the buckets when we caught them so Yeoldfurt decided to build nest boxes and set them much higher off the ground.  This is what he built for them.

 

We wondered if they would need a perch in front of the compartments but apparently not since I found Red's egg in one of the boxes this morning.   There's a lot of work to keeping livestock, even if it's only chickens.  Seems like there is constantly some repair or improvement project that needs to be done.  So it's always nice when your efforts are appreciated.  

Homemade Laundry Soap Containing Borax in a Gray Water System

In a recent discussion on Kris Watson's blog at Simply Living, water conservation methods such as a gray water system to capture water from the kitchen, laundry and shower were being discussed.  One of the comments left on the post said that you should not capture laundry water if you are making your own laundry soap using Borax because it "can be very toxic to plant life and not good as a gray water option."  No offense to the person who posted the comment, but I feel it's important to clarify some things. 

It is true that Borax can be used as a herbicide to kill weeds and stray grass.  For this purpose, you need one-half cup of Borax mixed with one gallon plus one cup of water.  Wear gloves and mix the Borax powder in one cup of water until well blended, then dilute in a garden sprayer containing one additional gallon of water.  Spray it directly on the vegetation you want to kill.  When mixed with water in this ratio and applied directly to a plant, Borax interferes with photosynthesis and the plant will turn yellow and die.  Basically, it will starve due to the inability to process nutrients drawn up through the roots.  A second and sometimes a third application are required to completely kill the vegetation.  

When making laundry soap, the same one-half cup of Borax is combined with one-half cup Arm & Hammer Washing Powder, one-third bar of grated Zote soap.  The final ingredient for making laundry soap is six gallons plus six cups of water.  So the concentration of Borax required to kill vegetation is more than six times the concentration in homemade laundry soap.  Consider also that the recipe for homemade laundry soap makes enough for at least 120 loads of laundry.  So simplistically, each load of laundry contains 1/120th of one half cup of Borax.  The concentration is then further diluted by the amount of water your washer uses to complete the wash and rinse cycles. 

So let's think about this.  If  two and sometimes three applications are required to kill vegetation when Borax is diluted in a little more than one gallon of water, how likely is it that a dilution at least 126 times weaker is going to have an adverse affect on vegetation?   

We have been making our own soap for over a year and a half now.  When this house was built in 1985, the original owners set up a primitive gray water system to capture water from the kitchen and laundry only.  I say 'primitive' because a state of the art system would include some kind of containment reservoir and some means of dispensing the captured gray water such as a sprinkler system or leach field.  The system in place here is just a two-inch pvc pipe that runs underground about 40 feet out from the house.  At the end of the run, about six inches of open-ended pvc protrudes above the ground to release gray water as it's produced.  The outlet is situated at the edge of the backyard fence line, about fifteen feet uphill from six mature pecan trees.  My husband trenched from the outlet pipe down toward the trees in an attempt to channel the water for a useful purpose.  Any water generated from the kitchen or washing machine flows out the end of that pipe.  In our current ongoing drought situation, the grass at the outlet and all the way down the trench is about the only green in the yard.  We have nine mature pecan trees on this place but the six that benefit from the gray water flowing down the trench are the healthiest of the bunch. 

Installing any gray water system  is most affordable at the time of construction.  After market systems can be installed but significant alterations to plumbing are always expensive.  But if you are able to capture gray water and you happen to make your own laundry soap, please don't let concerns about plant toxicity of Borax stop you from including laundry water in the capture.  You will be missing out on significant water conservation and irrigation opportunities.  

Renovations, Inside and Out

First thing on our Saturday 'to do' list is almost always to not set the alarm and sleep until we wake up.  This Saturday was no exception but since our alarms goes off at 4:45am on work days, 'sleeping in' generally means we roll out of bed by 7:00am.   Still plenty of daylight to do whatever needs to be done.  We had a mix of indoor and outdoor chores on today's list.  The main chore inside was to get the mattress back into the bedroom.  Then the bedroom and the living room needed to be straightened up.  A week of 'camping' in the living room made it impossible to keep things tidy in there and there were still a lot of tools and such scattered around the bedroom from last weekend's painting project.  The big chores outside were to snake-proof the chicken coop and rebuild all the nest boxes for the hens.   There were a few other things on both of our lists but those were the main goals to be accomplished today. 

During the work week, Yeoldfurt takes care of the morning chores like feeding the dog and outside cats, tending to the chickens and turning the horses out.  I leave for work an hour or two before the sun comes up, so it makes sense for him to take care of those chores Monday through Friday.  But on Saturday and Sunday, I'm off so I usually do the morning chores and let him enjoy his coffee.   When I finished with the chores this morning and came back in the house, I figured I would start the laundry and get him to help me move the mattress back into the bedroom.  Silly me ...he had already moved the mattress by himself while I was outside.  He's always doing sneaky things like that.

By 8:30, he was headed down to the chicken coop to start on his projects and I got busy with the laundry and straightening up the house.  I carried him a big mug of iced tea an hour or so after he started and helped him hold a board here and there.  But mostly, he worked outside and I worked inside.

He used plastic coated chicken wire to make a barrier on the floor of the chicken coop.  The three or four snakes we've caught in there so far seemed to be entering and exiting under the edge of the corrugated tin wall at the back of the coop.  The tin is rusted pretty bad at the bottom and I'm sure there's a lot of give for a big snake to push it's way through.  He buried the edge of the chicken wire several inches into the dirt at the base of the wall, then came a foot of so up the wall and tacked it down with a 2x4 rail that extends the full length of the wall.  We have lots of flat concrete stepping stones left here by the original owners and he used some of those to butt up against the wall at the bottom.  Those concrete stepping stones are very heavy ...it would take something a lot bigger than a snake to push them anywhere. 

While he was busy with the coop renovations, I spent most of my time putting the new shelves up in the bathroom.  It's kind of scary to start drilling holes in walls you just spent three days re-painting ...but after the first hole, I was okay.  The shelves are up and the bubble on my little torpedo level is dead center.  Just like I like it.  I also had to drill holes and hang hardware for several decorative pieces in the bedroom but it all went smoothly.  The only thing that's left now is to hang the new curtain rods.  That will be the main project on tomorrow's list.

On a side note, I think I found a source for some new laying hens for us.  The guy has Americanas and Rhode Island Reds and most of the chicks are a cross of the two breeds.  He has chicks for sale from three days to three months old for $3 to $5 each.   He even has some six month old hens that are just starting to lay that's he'll sell for $7 to $10, depending on the breed.  He seems to be very knowledgeable and said he would be happy to show us how to tell the males from the females on the really young chicks.  That will be useful if we're ever raising our own and selling chicks.  He guarantees what you buy from him too.  If you want only females and end up with a male, he will take it back and give you hen of the same breed and age.  Sounds like a good deal to me.  He lives about 40 miles south of us.  He was out of town for a funeral this weekend but we were already too busy to run down there today anyway.  We'll probably go see him next Saturday and buy four more chicks.  We'll buy chicks about the same age as the three we have in the brood box now so they can learn to like each other while they're still small.  Another few weeks and they'll all be out in the big coop anyway. 

We're both tired tonight, but happy with how much we accomplished this week and especially how much we accomplished today.  I don't know if I can talk Yeoldfurt into it or not, but I think we are due for a 'no projects' weekend now.  Everybody needs one of those once in a while.  If we end up driving the 40 miles south next Saturday to pick up those new chicks, maybe we can take our time on the way down and relax a little. 

Deluxe Compost Box ...Free!

One of the perks to Yeoldfurt's job is access to a lot of free material.  Every week, the company discards several heavy wooden crates and pallets.  The materials to be thrown away are left in a designated area near the loading dock and anyone who wants them is welcome to take them.  Yeoldfurt hauls something useful home almost every week. 

He has been disassembling the crates and pallets and stacking the lumber according to size and thickness.  A couple of weeks ago, he used some of this free material to build us a really nice compost box.  Before he started building it, we talked about what size it should be and where we should put it.  We've had it for about two weeks now and, so far, I think we made some good choices.  It's four feet square and the sides are about three feet tall.  He set it up against the chainlink fence between the garden and the chicken coop.  We figured that would be a convenient location both for putting new material in the box, and for getting material out of the box when it was time to build up the garden.  

This is what it looks like.  Notice that the four corner posts extend about two feet higher than the walls.  He did that on purpose so that it would be easily expandable.  If we run out of room, more boards can be added to the walls without him having to disassemble and reconstruct the whole box. 

But then he got fancy.  He built the front so that only the bottom board on that wall is permanently affixed.  All the boards above it can be removed to lower the side.  That will make shoveling material out of the box a whole lot easier on our backs. 

Fire ants are a constant problem here, so the first thing we put in the bin was a thick layer of cedar mulch.  Most bugs, including fire ants, don't like cedar.  I don't think it's poisonous but it's not inviting to them either, so hopefully it will minimize their presence.  After the layer of cedar mulch was in, Yeoldfurt pulled all of the old hay out of the chicken coop and piled it on top of the cedar.  We put the hay in the coop in December to help the chickens stay warm through the winter.  It was 'well-seasoned' and should be a bonus to our composting efforts. 

My next problem was figuring out how to easily and efficiently gather household scraps on a daily basis to add to the compost.  It's only the two of us and we only eat one meal at home on week days, so there isn't much to gather on a day to day basis.  I didn't want to make too much of a chore out of  'feeding' the compost.  I'm not looking for any new chores and if it's not convenient, it might not happen regularly.  I also didn't want to deal with odors or a potential accidental spill if I accumulated too much before dumping the scraps.  So here's what  I came up with ...

I got one of the plastic coffee containers out of storage, the kind with the handle molded into one corner and a tight-fitting lid.  I labeled it on the handle and the front and the lid 'COMPOST' and I keep it under the sink in my kitchen.  Every night when I wash the coffee pot, I dump the old grounds in the can.  When I crack an egg, the shell goes in the can.  When I trim vegetables, the trimmings go in the can.  Left over vegetables go in the can.  Pretty much everything except meat goes in the can. 

The coffee can is heavy plastic, very sturdy and easy to handle and has a tight-fitting lid so I don't have to worry about odor or spills.  A bonus that I realized after the first week is that coffee grounds are a natural odor deterrent.  I guess I knew that at one time but now it has real relevance.  The last time I emptied the can, it had four days worth of coffee grounds, some bell pepper and onion trimmings, leftover corn and green beans and three egg shells.  But the only thing I could smell when I opened the lid was the coffee grounds.  What a plus! 

Since keeping a compost pile wet is necessary for it to do it's job, I also started adding a little water to the can each time I put something in it.  When I empty the can, I add water to within two inches of the top before I take it out to the compost bin.  I give it a good swirl before I dump it which helps rinse the can.  The added water with each deposit of scraps is good for the composting process so it's a win-win. 

Oh, What a Great Day!

We always have a 'To Do' list for Saturdays and today, we got it all done.  That in itself made it a good day but what made it even better was that the first thing on the list was a fun thing ...riding.  That's something we don't do enough of these days and that we haven't done together in a long time. 

I think we enjoyed today so much partly because last week was tough for both of us at our respective jobs.  In both cases, it was your typical work-related, boss-engineered fiasco exacerbated with a healthy dose of office politics.  Total nonsense and so not productive in the work place.  By Thursday evening, it had taken it's toll on both our moods.  But Friday, as I drove in to the office, I decided I was going to do everything I could when I got home to make it an easy stress-free evening for Yeoldfurt.  Saturday is the one day out of the week when we are both off so we try to make it count. 

I had to do the grocery shopping on the way home, but I hurried through the aisles and didn't waste any time getting everything put away and dinner started as soon as I got home.  While dinner was on autopilot, I went out and took care of all the critter chores whic is a 30-45 minute ritual every evening.  By the time Yeoldfurt rolled in, all he had to do was get comfortable and meet me on the patio.  I had his favorite beverage on ice and waiting for him.  We always spend an hour or so on the patio in the evenings this time of year.  The temperatures are bearable and the sunset is spectacular.  This is our time to catch up on the happenings of each other's day and make plans for the days ahead.  When we had our session last night, we decided there were three things we wanted to get done this Saturday ... RIDE the horses, FINISH the electric fence (minor tweaks) and one town errand.

When we first started talking about it last night, Yeoldfurt suggested we go into town first and get that out of the way.  But the place we needed to go doesn't open up until 10:00 a.m. and I knew we should probably get our day started long before then.  So reminding him that since the first thing on our list was the one thing we could count on accomplishing, I suggested that we ride first.   We are always up with the chickens, so to speak, and it's always coolest in the morning so that's the best time to ride.  The horses are also already right here by the house until we turn them out in the morning so it's also the most convenient time to ride. 

Plans are just plans.  Sometimes life gets in the way and plans have to change.  But today, everything fell into place perfectly.  We were both up an hour before sunrise and I had started my experimental batch of 'Leather Cookies' in the Excalibur.  By 8:30, we were dressed and out the door to feed the little critters and gather the horses.  We brought the two horses in that we were going to ride and turned all the others out to the pasture.  By 9:00, we were saddled up and riding.   Yeoldfurt's mare is the buckskin named Lucy.  She's half-mustang and can be highly opinionated.  She hadn't carried a saddle, let alone a rider, for about a year so she was a little more opinionated than usual this morning.  But after she lost the first argument or two, she settled down to business.  By the time Yeoldfurt stepped off of her, she was willing and even enjoying the attention.  He had only been on her about 30 minutes but it was a good ride and a good refresher since she'd had so much time off.  I stayed in the saddle a little bit longer, working on some fancy stuff with my mare.  She's neck reining now and her sidepasses are getting better and better.  I guess her sidepasses have always been fine.  She knows what to do ...it's really me who is getting better and better with my cues.  If I get my cues right, she does great.  If she's sloppy or hesitant, it's because my cues were off.  She probably appreciates me finally figuring it all out! 

We spent a while grooming them after the ride and gave them both a handful of sweet feed for a treat.  By that time, the 'Leather Cookies' were ready, so we let them sample those too.  Lucy will eat anything you offer her but my mare tends to be skeptical of anything new.  They both LOVED the leather cookies though.  They ate three a piece and were looking for more, but we had to draw the line somewhere.  We turned them out with the other horses and got ready to run our town errand.  Even the town errand went smoother than we expected and we were back home in an hour.  I fixed us a light lunch, we took a short break, and then we were ready to start on the fence work.

Fencing is a never-ending chore when you have livestock.  Setting posts and stretching wire is slow and back breaking unless you have a crew and a tractor or bobcat to run an auger.  But today's chore only involved replacing and repairing fasteners on the electric fence.  Yeoldfurt started at one end and I started at the other.  The poor dog is used to tagging along with us whenever we work around the property, but we're usually working side by side.  With us heading off in opposite directions, she didn't know who to follow.  It didn't take long though and we met in the middle to finish up the job.  It was about 5:00 in the evening when we were done and we sat down on the patio with some cold drinks, taking a break to reflect on what a good day it had been.

Just when I couldn't imagine how the day could get better, we got an email from our tax consultant that we're getting a nice refund this year.  That means we can fund some of the goals we set for ourselves in January, like buying a freezer and getting a couple of calves.  There will probably even be a little 'mad money' left over for each of us.  I think Yeoldfurt has some ideas on how he'd like to spend his and I know I have ideas on how I'd like to spend mine.  Yup, today has truly been a great day!