Lovely morning in the Northwest

Titles are hard for me.  Often I don't know what I am going to write until I sit down to write.  I can just feel something bubbling at the surface waiting to be said.  Maybe I could start writing the title at the end of the entry.  Think I will try that today. 

Well, it is another gorgeous day here in the Northwest.  Wow.  The birds are up singing now at 4:30 or maybe earlier.  That is when I often hear them.  And it is almost full daylight at that time too.  Today, in spite of the cat jumping on me at a much earlier hour, I luxuriously slept in until almost 7:00.  Ahhhhhhh...that was nice.  What woke me up was pretty nice too.  I woke up the impatient chickens yelling about the fact that all other birds were up and singing for a long time and they had not been let out yet.  It was a lovely sound actually. 

Thinking about the chickens, who are happily out pecking about our yard by the way, makes me laugh.  We now have three girls, having lost one recently to stress...more on that later.  One of them has decided that she is the rooster.  She has been crowing like a rooster every once in a while.  She flaps her wings and gets really big when she does it too.  It makes me giggle.  (I have to admit that the picture above is not of our chickens or our backyard.  But it was a good stand in.)

I have to admit that at this time last year we had our garden all planted, the grass all mowed and we were on top of things.  This year...not so much.  And on top of that, we did not participate in our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this year either.  I make is sound like we are deadbeats.  But it really isn't true.  We have been working diligently to help people get a handle on their finances and to help them get a plan to get out of debt.  It has been exciting!  But, it makes me sad to see our garden.  And I miss our CSA people. 

Ok, the CSA was a serious decision though.  Throughout the winter I have studied more and more about the differences in organic and otherwise produced food.  I have also been looking more and more into GMOs (genetically modified organism) and the effects that these have on people.  And really, we have decided that this is not for us.  I realized that even if the farmer doesn't realize it, they can be buying seeds that are genetically modified.  Our sweet CSA family's farm is not organic, the fruit that they get from Eastern WA is not organic and the seeds that they get are from big retailers.  I love their family.  We have bought from them for several years.  I love that they are a small, family-run farm.  I love that they produce within an hour of where we live.  But, I just couldn't get past the other stuff this year.  I plan to write them a letter to let them know.  But I need to do it once we have decided who our next CSA provider is going to be. 

And by the way, our yard is trashed.  I like to think of it as natural.  But one good-sized dog and one giant dog is just too much for our poor backyard.  There is a patch of absolutely no grass right now.  And there is a patch of seriously happy dandelions too.  Can we really eat these?  Because if we can, I know what we will be eating all summer long!  They are HAPPY!  That chicken poop makes them VERY happy!  Tim just says the yard is trashed. 

We are finally finding some down time in the midst of the crazy schedules of financial coaching/teaching, baseball, and work...oh yeah work.  That needs a little more time and attention than it has been getting.  It is going well in spite of it all though. 

In any case, Tim mowed our front lawn and then weed-eated.  We still have some weeding and such that needs to be done, but it looks a lot better than it did yesterday morning!

And I did get out in the wee hours just before night and worked on getting the garden beds in shape.  I know that not disturbing the beds is the best option for gardening.  But I have to admit that there are two dogs who really like to dig in the beds.  And I had to work them to get the soil back where it was supposed to be.  My goal was to have the chickens help...they are great scratchers and movers of dirt!...but they wouldn't cooperate.  They kept running into a different bed and only digging in one corner. Guess all the lovely worms lived in that corner only.  :-) 

Well, I rambled here and there today.  But while I did, I kept sneaking peeks at our lovely, overgrown back yard.  And I listened to the birds out there loving it.  And I pet the dogs once in a while when they came up to see what I was doing.  Over all, I would have to say that this has so far been not just a successful morning, but a very pleasant one.  Hope yours was too. 

The girls are in their element!

Ok, I already told you a number of times, but I love Saturdays!!  Today, I was so excited to get up and to see how the chickens did that I woke up at 5:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep!  I checked on them.  They were eating and drinking and doing all the things chickens do.  The funnest part for me though was that they had ROOM.  They were not on top of each other and they had a little room to move around and check things out. 

I cleaned the kitchen, got a load of laundry going and picked up a bit while listening to Dave Ramsy recordings.  I listened to the Great Misunderstanding this morning.  It is inspirational.  It is about why giving is important.  And it got me revved up.

A few hours later I woke Tim up and he went out and mowed the little patch of lawn where we want to have our girls for their first stop.  We moved them over and opened their house.  It was fun to watch them peek their heads out.  They are only about two months old, and yesterday they hadn't been able to figure out how to use their ramp up into their home.  Today, their curiosity got the best of them and they all pushed each other down the ramp.  Now just to figure out how to get back up! 

It was fun to see them run!  They have been so cramped that they haven't been able to run.  Now they are running here and there.  I threw some feed around so that they they had something to search for and then I threw in some tiny pieces of carrot as well.  They are loving their freedom.

The dogs are a little too interested.  My nephew said something about an electric net.  I am going to get more info on that.  For now, I feel like Tim's chicken tractor is safe and secure. 

By the way, I am SO proud of my husband.  He designed this chicken tractor, he decided the pieces that he would need and he put the whole thing together.  It is beautiful!!  And I think he feels good about his work too.  I am sure that he has ideas for upgrades already.  :-)  That is just who he is. 

Love to you and yours on this Saturday morning.
P

P.S.  Pictures to follow.

Working on living more sustainably

I am finding I am struggling a bit with what blogging is for.  I read others' blogs and find that they blog in a certain direction.  My direction these days is learning to be more in nature and to live more frugally, more sustainably and with more ZEST!  I am looking for ZEST!!

Today is our chicken tractor day.  Tim drew up blue prints and we are going to work on building it today.  Carl was so cute yesterday.  He said, "Dad, I'll help you however I can!"  We have a list of items needed and we are planning to go to Home Depot in a bit. It should be an adventure. 

I am not much of a do-it-yourselfer.  But I am finding more and more that I can learn new things.  I am currently growing lettuce, carrots, onions, tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis and some yellow squash.  They are looking lovely and so far the rabbits haven't found the holes that got burned in the deer fencing around the garden.  How did the holes get burned?  Well...it had something to do with the cool weed burner we have.  But I won't say more about that.  :-)  I will probably be fixing our fence today too. 

Why do we want chickens?  Of course eggs are good.  And I like animals.  I like taking care of them and interacting with them.  And when I first thought about it, I talked to my sister who has a number of chickens.  She told me that they eat all their kitchen waste.  That is cool.  Mostly because our worm bin is too small and they are unable to keep up with the amount of veggie waste that we produce.  This is a good sign because when we got the worm bin, we didn't have much waste and it was just fine.  This shows that we are really working on eating better and eating more whole foods. 

And fertilizing is also a great part of chickens.  That is why we decided on a tractor.  Our soil is bad out here and every little bit of fertilizer and building up of the soil will help. 

I am a bit worried about the wildlife and them taking an interest in the chickens (this includes my dogs), but we just have to prepare the best way we can and then try it.  Hope it works!!

As another step in our frugal living/more sustainable living quest, we started back with our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this week.  I like to call it our farmshare.  We get a half share of veggies and a half share of fruit every week.  The takings were sparse this week, as it has been unseasonably cold, but things should be moving in the right direction soon.  The farm is just down the road and they are a nice family.  It is neat to know where our vegetables are coming from. 

We are hoping to do some canning this year as well.  We use a lot of tomatoes in our cooking, and even putting these up ourselves would be a huge money-saver.  Or at least it would be cool to know that we grew them and canned them ourselves! 

It looks like it is going to be a lovely day today.  The sun is out and it is supposed to be in the mid-70s today.  NICE!  The dogs are already out enjoying the morning.  I guess I had better get there too.