We’ve had a run of warm weather (50s and 60s F).  Everyone seems to be out raking and piling branches by the street for the village guys to pick up. My daughter-in-law and I raked up branches dropped by our giant weeping willow from the neighbors’ lawns. We had a terrible ice storm at Christmas time that took down a couple of giant branches. My husband and son took care of most of the debris at the time, but there were still plenty of thin branches to rake after the snow melted. My back lawn is still a disaster area! I’ll be raking it a little at a time in the next week.

There is still no green grass to speak of, but the crocuses are blooming and the honey bees are busy. (I hope they have a warm hive to retreat to because winter isn’t done yet. There is always a big snow storm at the beginning of April before it finally settles down to being spring around here.) I am leaving most of my beds alone until I know it is really going to be spring. I don’t want to expose any new growth to the last severe freezes.

The cold frame has been anything but cold. I have had it open on several days. One day I was late getting out to open it and found the temperature reading 110F. (Bad gardener—no biscuit!) It is  propped open with two bricks today. I am watering regularly, especially the soil nearest the house. I have tiny sprouts coming up of mesclun mix and radishes. There is no sign of spinach yet.  

It isn’t truly Spring yet, but we are all appreciating this mild weather one day at a time. Begonia

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I love garage sales that nickel and dime me, but even a dime is paying too much for paper napkins because it was a dime you could have spent on something more durable–like cloth napkins.

I learned about cloth napkins from a friend of mine who grew up in a country where there were no paper napkins. This friend was very frugal and brought up to eat neatly and make that napkin last for one week! She encouraged me to try using cloth napkins and would point them out at garage sales. I had always thought of them as special occasion items that had to be ironed and fussed over, but she used them every day and it didn’t seem to be wearing her out.

 I switched to cloth when we had three kids at home and were using so many paper napkins a week that we might as well have been wiping our mouths with dollar bills! Good cotton or linen napkins can be bought at garage sales and thrift stores for anywhere from 10 cents to 50 cents each. (I don’t like to pay more.) If you are handy with a sewing machine, you can make your own from scrap fabric or old tablecloths  for even less!

I figure that I wash the equivalent of one queen size sheet in napkins each week. (I don’t demand that one napkin be used for a week!) This requires a little water, a tad bit of soap, and my time to move them from washer to dryer (or out on the line) and fold them. 

Do I sometimes use paper napkins? Sure—when I can get them for free! Begonia

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Have you started your master list yet? Our village-wide garage sale, and those of other towns around here, will be beginning in about six weeks. I get the bulk of my “needed stuff” at the first couple of village-wides of the season. People who don’t normally have a garage sale, as well as the “regulars,” have sales during these Festivals of Economy, so the pickings are excellent! Now is the time to prepare: make your list and start enveloping some cash each week if you haven’t started already!

Having a list helps me stay focused on what we need and slows my impulse buying. I find that without a list I forget or fail to budget for the things I will need in the household in the coming year. (I journal what I spend at each sale, so I know on average what I spend each year at garage sales. That amount becomes part of the household budget line the following year. See  my 2/23/10 blog.)

I carry with me at all times my master list and index cards containing clothing and shoe sizes and the measurements needed for shopping remodeling and decorating items (such as paint, flooring, tile, baseboards, molding, curtains, and countertops).

Here’s an example of my master list so far:

·         Electric chainsaw

·         Freezer (20 cubic feet—chest, 2 or 3 years old)

·         Flooring for living room and family room (wood and tile—300 sq. ft.)

·         Bathroom sinks and or counters

·         Bathroom faucets (new)

·         1x2-inch wire fencing (3-4 ft. width)

·         Split rail fencing

·         Bricks and patio block

·         Ceiling and wall paint

·         Plywood

·         Plastic fruit ripener

·         Extra two-paddle bread machine

·         Extra adjustable slot toaster

·         2 sets of King Sized sheets

·         Bicycle Repair Stand

I can’t wait for the season to start in earnest. It’s been a long snowy winter. I’m looking forward to some real bargains. I hope you are, too! Begonia

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I’ve got the fever. Temperatures are going to be in the 40s (F) for the next four or five days. It’s time to plant the cold frame. 

Last year was my first season using the cold frame on the south side of the house.  I wish I had room for a couple more! My husband made it for me out of scrap wood and one of three large storm windows I junk picked from a neighbor years ago. (The other two are installed in the south wall of the chicken coop with a three- inch air space between for insulation value.) I planted greens in March and then harvested in April and replanted with cabbage and broccoli for transplant. I used the frame for hardening off seedlings in May. This year I’d like to see how long I can extend the growing and harvesting season by planting another crop of greens in August/September.

It wasn’t as complicated as I thought to grow things in the cold frame. I did have to pay attention to temperature and open the frame when it got too hot inside. Watering was a key issue as well. It dries out fast when the sun is shining. I had some problems with squirrels digging around on warm days, but this year I am going to cover it with a screen of ½-inch hardware cloth from a dismantled chick play pen.

I prepared the soil in the frame last fall so it would be easy to pop the seeds in and water. Today, I divided the frame into two parts and planted two kinds of cut-and-come-again greens (mesclun) mixes plus spinach and radishes. I’ll have to cover the frame with Styrofoam insulation board at night until the temperatures quit falling into the 20s and teens (F).

Some good references for extended season and four season gardening are Building and Using Cold Frames by Charles Siegchrist in Storey’s  Country Wisdom Bulletin series (www.Storey.com) and Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman, Barbara Damrosch, and Kathy Bray.

I can hardly wait to taste that first salad! Begonia

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I’ve been delving into my stash of yarn to make scarves for a clothing drive at church. It is a local effort to provide warm clothing for families in need. I am really enjoying crocheting again for a good cause.

Last spring, I hit a garage sale that had a lot of yarn during our village-wide extravaganza (95 sales in one weekend). The woman running the sale noticed me looking at the yarn. I picked up only one bag (I had pretty much run out of money by this time).  I told her that I would be using it for charity work, and she said, “Oh, just take it all!” So here I am making scarves with it a year later true to my word.

I’ve tried fancier patterns for scarves, but this granite stitch goes quickly, is flexible, and is very warm. I can make a 4- or 5-foot scarf a day if my needle doesn’t start smoking too much!

Easy Granite Stitch Crocheted Scarf

Choose a needle that complements the thickness of yarn you plan to use . (Gauge will vary depending on size of needle and thickness of yarn.)

Chain 27 (or odd number of chain needed for desired width plus 2 chain for turning)

Row 1: Single crochet in third chain from hook, chain 1, skip 1 chain, and single crochet in next chain. Repeat across,  single crocheting in final chain. Chain 2 and turn.

Row 2: Skip first single crochet and single crochet in first chain-one space of previous row, chain 1, single crochet in next chain-one space and repeat across.  Single crochet in space between turning chain and the first single crochet of the previous row.  Chain 2 and turn.

Repeat  row 2 until scarf is the desired length.

Add fringe or leave the edges of the scarf plain.

You can vary the pattern by using half, double, or treble crochet instead of the single crochet in the pattern shown. The result will be a more open “weave.” You can also create insets of openwork by inserting rows of half and double crochet. 

If you don’t have a good cause to donate these scarves to, you will also find that they make good gifts and beginner crochet projects. The first scarf I made using this stitch, many years ago, won a blue ribbon at the Eau Claire County Junior Fair! Have Fun, Begonia

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I’ve been ordering seeds from Le Jardin du Gourmet for over 15 years, ever since I got ahold of one of those post cards with all the herb seed sample packets for 35 cents each.  I was able to experiment with growing all kinds of herbs for a very small cash outlay. They offer sample seed packs on all of their seeds: herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Their regular size seed packets are only $1 each, and the flat rate for shipping and handling seeds is $3.50 (outside the United States $8.50).

The amazing thing is that these are really good quality seeds. There is nothing fancy about their catalog or packaging, but I’ve never had a problem with germination or with mislabeled seed. They also offer heirloom varieties of tomatoes. I buy a lot of my greens seed from them. They have a nice mesclun mix and many varieties of lettuce, mache, spinach, and radishes. They also offer one of the widest varieties of herb seed I’ve come across.

 I like to order the sample packets of herbs especially, because My Little Farm in Town is. . . . Little! I don’t need more than six sage plants at a time. If you are living in an apartment or condo and want to grow a few vegetables or herbs in pots on your balcony or deck, you only have to buy what you need.   

You can go to their web site www.ArtisticGardens.com  to check out everything they have to offer. Begonia

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Nothing beats the late winter blues like a new magazine and a cup of good strong tea or coffee (I prefer coffee).  I’ve been cutting back on my magazine subscriptions lately, and a single magazine purchased at a store can cost $5 or $6! I prefer to get them for free.

I have friends who share magazines with me. I also swap subscriptions with friends by trading my magazines with them when I am finished reading.  I find magazines in Free Boxes at garage sales and library book sales as well.  If you find a sale that is selling magazines, you can often pick up what didn’t sell free for the hauling at the end of the sale. People are generally very tired and ready to be done and are grateful not to have to deal with the recycling!

I also get a lot of “free” magazines by borrowing from my local library. I sometimes get copies to keep when they periodically (sorry, can’t resist a good pun) thin their collections because of limited storage space.

My favorite way to get a fresh, new magazine for free (or just the cost of a stamp) is by answering “One-Issue-Free” offers. Most of these offers come in the form of “Junk Mail” or postcard pack promotions delivered to my door by my mail carriers, Cheryl and Dan! You also can find these offers on line at many magazines’ web sites.

A few things to remember about taking magazine publishers up on these offers:

·         Keep track of your paperwork. Make a note that you have sent for one of these offers. Sometimes they will send you the bill before they send you the sample. Wait until you get the magazine before returning the canceled bill, or you will never get the magazine sample!

·         When the magazine arrives, be sure to mark the bill Please Cancel and return it promptly.  The deal is for one free magazine, not two—that would be cheating.

·         There is a danger in all this. Publishers make this kind of offer because they are hoping to hook you and sell you a subscription. If you are a helpless magazine-oholic, you may end up spending more money then you intended, so “ know thyself” before you send off  for any of these freebies. The unexamined life can be expensive!

Lest you think that I am a stingy, tacky person. I want you all to know that I added that last item to my list because some of my most cherished magazine subscriptions: Backyard Poultry http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/  and Countryside http://www.countrysidemag.com/  began with a free issue!  Happy reading! Begonia.

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It was a balmy 35°F this morning when I awoke. So—I’m hanging out the wash today on My Little Farm in Town.

I have a friend that does not own a dryer because of her green convictions. I admire her. She is a woman of grit and perseverance who hangs her laundry to dry all over inside her house during the winter and wet spells and outside in warmer weather.

I am not as noble and committed a creature. I hang my laundry outside for more mundane reasons:

1.       Economics: I might already have mentioned that our electric rates have risen significantly, and I’m tired listening to our dryer consume more kilowatts than I can afford.

2.       Vanity: I hate the sausagey way my cotton t-shirts fit when they shrink in the dryer.

3.       Senses: I just love the fresh air smell of line-dried clothing.

I usually dry only my cottons outside because I live in town and the wind doesn’t blow as vigorously between the houses. I can only get so many loads dry per day, and I only do laundry once a week. (As a teen living on a hill in northern Wisconsin, I could hang and dry a load in twenty minutes! Residing as a single person on the flats of Dubuque, Iowa, I did my laundry once a month and hung it all, with my landlord’s permission, on the expansive lines in the side yard of the brewer’s mansion converted into apartments where I lived at the time. Those were the days!)

My chickens like it when I am outside hanging or folding laundry, teetering on top of the packing snow drifts. It adds variety to their day and the anticipation of the treats I sometimes feed them between loads. (My next-door neighbor also thought it might entertain her Australian pen friend and asked if she could take a picture of me in action. I consented, thinking it might add an interesting cultural note to her correspondence.)

Today, I may need to take the last little bit of moisture out of my loads in the drier when the sun goes down,  but I will still be spending less on electricity.  Living greener and leaner by the minute, Begonia

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I woke up this morning listening for Robins. They usually return to My Little Farm in Town March 1—give or take a day. I usually hear them for a few days before I see them. My sister in East Texas watches them flock and fly away. I listen for their return.

As I lay in bed this morning, I heard hairy and downy woodpeckers, cardinals, and our murder of crows, the sentinel crow alerting the rest. The blue jays made their usual squeaking garden gate cry.

 I’m waiting for the morning I hear the robin break the silence first.

That is the thing about winter in this part of the world. You know it is coming when the birds fall quiet. Even the ones that stay the winter have different conversations. It allows you to hear other sounds. We have eleven mature evergreens bordering our lot and a half, so I listen to the sea sound of them all winter as I walk out to take care of the girls each morning and evening.  I hear the dry scraping of blowing snow mix with the little begging noises the chickens make when I go out to collect eggs midday.

Living in town there is always the noise of cars, dogs, and the highway when the wind is out of the south or west. I like the days best when the wind blows from the north.

Even though  the north wind is colder, it blows away the highway noise. In the spring, it brings the sound of tractors and the smell of dairy (manure)—and the calls of robins sheltering by the lake in the wooded valley below my neighborhood.  

Are you listening? Begonia.

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I went to the first garage sale of the season this past weekend, and I believe that I have skunked all of my sisters and my DEAR mother in having attended the first sale of the 2010 season. True—this was a sale held in a church basement, but it was listed in the local ad shopper as a “HUGE 9-Family Sale.”

We have a friendly competition within the family every year for who will be the first to attend a garage sale. At this time of the year in Wisconsin, these sales usually take place inside! I did pretty well. Here is what I got for $15.50.

• NEW One pair Wool men’s Wigwam socks  (for my husband to use cross country skiing)—50 cent
• NEW Home Interiors Very Berry column candle—25 cents
• NEW Tyler Candle Co. Limelight votive—25 cents
• Five newborn t-shirts (for Midwife Kits)—$1
• Vintage flower pot—25 cents (I collect)
• Vintage ice cream scoop with red Bakelite handle—$1 (I collect)
• Stainless steel measuring cups: 2 cup, two 1/3 cups, ½ cup, 1/8 cup, and ¼ cup—$1
• Jergens and Victoria Secret lotion—2 tubes for $1
• Two short Gap hooded and zippered sweatshirts: black and white—2 for $4
• Trendy, short, black and white sweater with three-quarter length sleeves, shawl collar—$2
• Two V-neck shirts for layering—$1.50
• Two camisoles: black and white—50 cents
• Three black shirts for layering—$1 (All ten clothing items are for my daughter who just went through another growth spurt—I keep trying to avoid taking her to the mall.)
• Two knit cotton dishwashing cloths—$1 (I know—a princely sum, but I wanted them.)
• Faux pearl multistrand necklace—25 cents
• FREE quilted zipper shoe bag (Gotta love those free boxes!)
• FREE hair scrunchy

How and WHY do I keep track of all this stuff? How—I keep a journal of all the stuff I buy, the date, sometimes the place, my impressions of the day, and how much I paid. WHY—I get most of our household goods, craft materials, books, entertainment (CDs/DVDs), clothing, and home improvement items at garage and estate sales. (I’m not an auction gal, although I love auction-goers’ sales!) In order to budget, my husband and I need to know where the money is going.  Also,  some sales are consistently good or bad, and I like to remember where they are located—to get there early in the first case and to avoid wasting time in the latter case! (I know that this isn’t very noble, but sometimes I just like to reread the journal just to gloat!)

Have you been to any good garage or estate sales yet?  I’d love to hear about your latest best deal! Begonia

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I participated in a Death by Chocolate Event (baking contest) at my local library last night. It was a very nice example of an activity that doesn’t cost much but really brightens the dull days between Valentine’s Day and Easter (which also involve large amounts of chocolate here in the United States).  It was an adult event, so most of the people where there with their dates or friends.  Over 200 people came to taste chocolate candy and baked goods and enjoy the Big Band music and an evening out.

The chocolate fumes alone were seizure inducing.

It was judged by one pastry chef and two chocolatiers, as well as by all the people who came to taste.  There were 39 participants giving out samples in seven categories: professional, cookies, candies, brownies, cakes, cheese cakes, and hodge podge. Each category was judged by the public tasters and the professional s.  One entry per category was allowed and each entry cost $5. The public could make a donation if they wished. Otherwise, tasting was free!

I entered what I called my Chocolate Raspberry Dream Cake and won the People’s Choice Award for Cakes.  I was really surprised because I had entered  a Chocolate Truffle Sweet Orange Marmalade cake in a previous year—It was a volcano of chocolate that I was sure would win—and failed to score. My entry this year had a vanilla icing on a extremely dark chocolate cake with raspberry preserves between the layers (I had made the preserves  from the fruit of a dear friend’s raspberry patch).  I had a relaxing afternoon putting it together and figured, I would have a nice evening visiting with friends and getting to know a few new people.

My personal favorite of the evening was a Tennessee Whiskey Bacon Truffle.  It was flavored with essence of bacon—I never knew such a thing existed; yeah, I’m from the sticks—and a very fine aged whiskey. The combination sounded revolting to me, but I decided that trying something new was almost as good as a tropical vacation. First, I tasted chocolate, then the whiskey, then a smoky/salt flavor, and finally the fat of the cream—then it all mixed together. That woman took home a trophy.  

One of my neighbors won the Judges Choice for Cakes. More Bacon! Again, it sounded odd but tasted fine. It was called The Elvis. It was a big, multilayer banana cake, with a layer of peanut butter and a layer of chocolate between each cake layer. The Icing was chocolate, and there was very crisply fried bacon sprinkled generously on top.  The King would have approved. According to my neighbor, Elvis’s favorite sandwich, peanut butter, bananas, chocolate, and BACON, inspired this cake!

Here’s my recipe for Chocolate Raspberry Dream Cake.

Cake

½  cup cocoa (I used dark chocolate/dutched blend—your choice.)

¾ cup strong coffee (You shouldn’t be able to see through it, and it should be brewed from a dark roast.)

2 cups brown sugar

½ cup butter

2 eggs (I use the nice brown ones with the extra rich yokes that my hens lay for me—good girls!)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

Filling

2 cups raspberry preserves (Slightly warmed to spread more easily between the layers)

Icing

1 cup cold water              

2  heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ cup unsalted butter (8 ounces)  (The unsalted butter gives the icing an almost cheese cake or cream cheese taste)

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour baking pans.

Cake: Dissolve cocoa in hot coffee. Set aside to cool. Then cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs. Beat in dissolved cocoa. Sift together dry ingredients and add to batter alternately with buttermilk.

Bake cake until it tests done (toothpick or cake tester inserted in middle comes out clean), about 30 minutes.

Filling: Warm preserves slightly.

Icing: Mix water and flour and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until it is thick and smooth. Put in a small bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Press wrap into top of mixture so there is no air space and cool. Scoop flour and water mixture into a larger bowl and add the rest of ingredients. Beat until thick, white, and fluffy.

Assembly:  Cool cake layers in pans then turn out onto a cake plate, spread slightly warmed preserves between layers, coat top and sides with icing, and garnish top with shaved chocolate or raspberries or both. (Hint: I slipped my Raspberry Chocolove bar into my apron pocket while I cooked, and it was just the right temperature to make nice shavings when it was time to garnish.)

If you decide to make this cake, let me know how it turned out for you. Happy baking! Begonia.

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You may be thinking after reading my last blog about “What Chickens Want” that I am a few bricks short of a full load and that I don’t understand the true nature of chickens. Always keep in mind that I live in town,  I have a small flock, and they are basically “working pets.”  I have a lot of people watching and enquiring (sometimes daily) about the health and well being of my “girls.”

Here are a few characteristics of chickens that they don’t tell you about at the feed store when you are admiring those fluffy little chicks:

• Chickens Are Birds and All Birds Are Naughty. Our chickens scold, jump, and peck at us from time to time if the snacks are present but not being dispensed quickly enough.  They are not as bright as parrots but can be just as ornery. My Grandmother’s green parrot, Mike, used to bully my mother whenever she came to visit. My grandmother doted on the little terror, and he could do no wrong. He would nip at my mom’s ankles and drive her up onto a chair and then chuckle and knuckle walk around it until my grandmother took pity on her,  picked him up, and fondly chided him. For all his antics, he was good company for my widowed grandmother.                                         We have one hen, Saucy Sally, who is always trying to get our attention for one reason or another by pecking. We sometimes pick her up and tuck her under one arm while doing chores. This gentle domination seems to settle her hash temporarily. Sure, she’s spicy, but she’s a good-looking hen who lays nice eggs, and we feel she is worth the effort.
• Idle Beaks Are the Devil’s Workshop. Chickens are hardwired to seek and peck. If they are under- or overstimulated, crowded, or malnourished,  they seek and peck each other. This can get so ugly that I won’t even elaborate on it here.  Keeping  birds busy with toys, chicken Kongs, and things they can peck and eat is just common sense from the standpoint of controlling noise, as well as controlling carnage. The goal is eggs for our table and manure for the compost bins, not casualties.
• Chickens are miniature T-Rexes with Feathers.  This is related to my previous point. Chickens are like killer reptiles with warm blood. Watch them gobble up anything that moves, and you will know what I mean. An acquaintance of mine picked up a board in her coop one day and uncovered a colony of mice. The chickens got right to work and killed and ate them as efficiently as good mousers. Chickens also move abruptly, compete fiercely, and are harder to read than mammals, which makes some people uneasy.
• Roosters Can Be the Spawn of Evil. I have no roosters because I live in town and minimizing noise is very important. I’ve run into a few of my chickens’ country cousins, though, and it wasn’t pretty. Roosters are very good at challenging and attacking what they consider threats whether it is you, your child, or another bird. They seem to fluff up to three times their normal size and come hunting red meat.  They don’t respond like mammals to yelling and posturing; they just keep on coming! Many people have had experiences with roosters that have colored their view of chickens for a lifetime.  Roosters do, however, do a wonderful job of warning the flock  and deflecting danger, so the hens  and chicks can get to safety—often at great cost to themselves. 

All in all, I enjoy my hens just the way they are and have very few illusions about them. They keep me on my toes and are absorbing to watch and work around. I like the little noises they make and how their eyes get shiny when they are about to do something bad.  They are one of my dreams come true. I hope you are as fortunate. Begonia

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We are having a snow storm, so I won’t be uncovering the yard and letting the girls out today. I went out a little later than usual this morning with the daily scratch and cleaning implements.  I could see immediately that the gals had been busy. There were four eggs in nesting boxes, the area in the northwest corner had been scratched down to shavings for dust baths, and the straw around the door was beaten flat by big chicken feet.

While I unbolted and unclipped the door, I could hear them inside scolding and making excited “give me scratch” noises. Their dear beady little eyes dilated when they saw the other object I carried: baked pumpkin in the half shell! I put it in a white plastic tray I keep in the coop for serving such delicacies and put it down among them. They fell to at once, greedily slurping up the squash.

This distraction gave me time to clean under the roosts and clear the water font of waterlogged feed crumbs. It wasn’t long before a couple of the girls were looking for scratch and tugging at my trousers with their naughty beaks.

This is my cue to throw some scratch (a couple handfuls each of oats and cracked corn) into the straw/hay and wood shaving bedding that covers the floor of the coop. The girls will spend a good part of the afternoon pecking every atom of corn they can find, and it takes them a little extra time to hull the oats before eating the kernel.

The bedding itself is also a source of nutrition and distraction for the gals. I occasionally put a few flakes of seedy hay or straw in for them to tear apart. They eat the weed and oat seeds, mummified bugs, and green parts of the grasses. What is left breaks down and insulates them from the cold floor of the coop during extreme winter weather. When the bedding becomes really poopy and chopped up, I use  it as a carbon layer for my winter compost system, which makes room for fresh bedding and the cycle begins again.

I sometimes bring them a treat of a few crumbled bread heels while they are out in their yard. They will seek out every crumb, digging very energetically. They are such energetic diggers that I don’t feed bread in the coop because they kick up geysers of bedding and dust, totally fouling (ha!) their water.

I leave a little bit of scratch in the plastic coffee container and turn it so that the scratch falls into the handle. The hollow handle is too small for them to get their heads trapped in, (this might not be the case if your birds are a bantam or smaller variety, so be careful),  but it does trap some of whatever dry treat I put in it. It acts as a kind of chicken Kong, making them work to get that last bit of feed out. It is quite entertaining to watch them scratch and knock the container around the yard or coop, excited by the delicious rattling sounds.

Sometimes I will put a handful of dry feed into a brightly colored Frisbee disk. They seem to like the contrasting colors and the tapping noises their beaks make on the hard plastic. Our first chicken, The Budge, enjoyed the larger bright, crinkly Mylar ball cat toys. She was a tiny hen and would push them all around her portable coop. My present flock of big birds were absolutely terrified of the same type of toy! (We always make sure we never put any nonfood item in with the chickens that they can pick apart and swallow.)

I also have a large, square suet feeder that I fill with cabbage and hang in their coop from time to time. It swings around as they peck, and they have to calculate the swing of the cage in order to feed. A new suet feeder is pretty cheap. I wouldn’t advise using a used suet feeder; wild birds carry a ton of viral diseases that you wouldn’t want to pass on to your flock.

You’re probably thinking that my hens are some of the most spoiled chickens in the United States of America.  You may be right. They are working pets that give me eggs and manure for My Little Farm in Town. I figure that the least I can do is give them a good chicken life. Begonia

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What DO chickens really need? I ask myself this questions daily. I've been keeping chickens in town for four years—just a year or so before the big chicken craze hit this country. My neighbor across the street had been raising chicks from eggs for 3 or 4 years before that. We would go over and visit her brood. She would encourage us to just DO IT. I was hesitant. I wanted to do it right. . . I'd witnessed too many sad situations where ignorance was misery for animals. (A good overall book on raising and housing chickens is Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow. It's worth the money, just buy it.)

We finally borrowed an incubator and fertile eggs from a friend and managed to hatch our first bantam chick. We named her The Budge. (That is short for bugerigar, or parakeet for those of you who are not bird fanciers.) We brooded her in our basement office. My husband, an extremely patient man, listened to her cheep nonstop for weeks. I would sometimes come down to find him holding the tiny chick in his lap, gently rubbing the top of her head with the tip of his finger to quiet her. Chickens really need company. We had to supply that care and attention because hers was the only egg that hatched.

Our second batch of chickens are the five Dominiques that we now tend. We also brooded them in the basement (but not in the office this time!). I got them from a farm supply store in an adjacent county. I had already successfully brooded a chick, so I knew what to do and had the brooder set up and at the right temperature so I could pop the chicks into it as soon as I got home. I transported them home in a small pet carrier lined with paper towels and swaddled in several thick towels with the car heater on high. I sweated all the way home, but they were just barely warm enough. Chicks need warmth as much as they need food and water.

Chickens need a safe, dry, draft-free place to roost and get out of the weather. Most breeds can handle some cold weather (mine handle very cold weather). People wack together some pretty pitiful hovels to house their chickens and then wonder why their feet freeze or the racoons get in and kill them all. Building a stout and (in our area a well-insulated) properly ventilated coop is a must, because we have hot, humid summers; long, cold, and snowy winters; and plenty of vermin and wandering dogs. (Our neighbors call our hen house the "Robo-Coop" but we prefer to think of it as our "Litltle Fort Knox.")

My husband built a mobile coop from plans I found ina book by a wonderfully precise British fellow by the name of  Michael Roberts (Poultry House Construction, Gold Cockerel Books) (www.goldcockerelbooks.co.uk). They lived in this coop on the backyard lawn until they got too crowded and started picking feathers out of each other because chickens need adequate space.

We detached the coop section from the mobile coop and put it in the fenced poultry yard that used to be our backyard vegetable garden. They lived in the yard, retiring to the little coop at night, until my husband finished building the permanent coop adjacent to it. As soon as I moved the pullets into the chicken yard, the aggressive behavior stopped. My chicken yard is a fenced 15- by 20-foot space surrounded by a 1- by 2-inch wire mesh fence with 2-foot high chicken wire partially buried around the bottom to reinforce and exclude digging predators. I also have poulty net over the top because we have red tail hawks that love to snack on birds. (One day shortly after installing the netting, I found one of these hawks roosting on the peak of the coop roof surveying my chickens. It swooped down, was brought up short by the netting, and flew away in disgust!)

I bed my chicken's yard with seedy hay and straw. This provides them with plenty of material to scratch and peck because chickens need things to do. Boredom can lead to all kinds of bad habits. Leading causes of cannibalism in chickens are inadequate nutrition, crowding, and boredom. You don't think of chickens of having enough brains to get bored. I think that so much of their behavior is hardwired that they have plenty of space left over to think of other things like: "Where's my snack?" and "What have you done for me lately?"

Chickens need decent food and fresh water at regular intervals. They can get along on scraps and odds and ends, but that is just survival—don't expect peak egg production and lots of wonderful tasting meat. Water is especially important. Chicks' growth is slowed if they don't get enough water, and hens may go into a molt and stop laying if they are deprived of water for a day and a half according to The Chicken Health Book by Gail Damerow (Storey Publishing, www.storey.com). (This is another book that is worth owning.) When the weather is hot, chickens need additional cool water fonts and shade.

I'm about chickened out (please ignore the pun) for now. And I haven't even mentioned that chickens need a place to take their daily dust bath! Maybe that will be the subject of another chicken blog! Begonia.

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Trying to save money on electricity? Our electric rates have risen 50% recently! Electric stoves use a lot of energy. Next time you have to cook noodles, try cooking them this way and lower your electric bill a bit. Bring the water to a boil and then add the noodles and stir. Cover the pot and turn off the heat. Set a timer for 20 minutes and leave the pot of water and noodles set. When the  time is up, stir and drain the noodles. They should be done to a turn! (Spaghetti may take a little less time. )

The same method can be employed when hard cooking eggs. Cover the eggs with one inch of cold water and rapidly bring to a boil, then cover and take off the heat. Set a timer for 22-24 minutes. When the time is up, drain and cool in cold water.

Hope this tip helps you offset the rise in your electric bill a little. Bon Appétit. Begonia

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One of the tips for the day recently on ThriftyFun.com concerned reuses for the extremely stout inner packaging of  breakfast cereals and crackers. These bags can also be used to freeze food. When I buy chicken or ground turkey in bulk, I divide the meat into meal-size portions and place them in one of these bags, squeeze out the air, and fold it closed, and tape it shut with masking or freezer tape. These bags don’t leak and are tough enough to bump around the deep freeze without breaking.

This tip was one of the first things I learned from a good friend of mine when I was part of our Frugal Friends group. The group is disbanded now, but I picked up a lot of good information and have made contacts to coop on food. I still share halves of beef and get tips on bargain shopping food with one of the friends I made while in the group. 

You might think about getting together with some other kindred spirits to share information and pool resources. It is a good way to offset some of the rising costs of living. Begonia

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We live a quiet life here on our little farm in town. We are one of the Ten Percent of American households who do not have any form of dish or cable television service.

I heard this statistic on NPR while sitting in my recliner drinking my morning cup of coffee. I don't know where they got this number, but it made me think.

I thumped down my mug of coffee and thought, "Oh my gosh! I think I've become one of the counter culture!"

Ever since we had to install one of those goofy little black boxes to get any TV at all, I've been watching less and less regular TV and more of my own programming. I have a lot of movies, TV shows, and documentaries on VHS tapes (OK−I admit to having a few extra VHS players squirreled away in odd places around the house against the day they quit making them) and DVDs acquired at thrift stores, garage sales, used book stores, and library book sales. We get movies free (sort of) from our public library and watch on line for free at places like imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) and Internet rental sites that have some free content.

Sometimes we will go whole days without watching anything at all. In the winter, you might find us reading books, creating art or crafts, and writing letters (yes, by hand). In the warmer months, we are apt to spend the days gardening and visiting with neighbors. (The Fine Art of Neighboring--that ought to be another blog.)

I can't count my family among the (probably statistically tiny) number of people who don't watch any visual media, but we have taken responsibility for what we do watch. It's a rich and varied life. Are you one of the ten percent? Begonia

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My good neighbor down the street is a truly green person. (She earnestly tries to treads as lightly on the earth as an American can.) She introduced me to making my own non-aerosol room sprays.

I used to buy orange spray and other scents of spray from time to time from home decorating parties (or from the garage sales of people who had attended these parties). These sprays consisted of some kind of mysterious liquid and scent.

It turns out that (in my neighbor's recipe) the mysterious liquid is water and the scent is essential oil. I reuse the glass bottles and spray pumps of some room sprays I found at garage sales for fifty cents or a couple of dollars. (The original price was $10 at a home party--I imagine they are more expensive now.) I have a stash of essential oils that I amassed during a period of potpourri making years ago. I also find bottles of essential oils at sales for a dime or quarter. (I don't like to pay more than 50 cents.)

I pour 12 or 13 drops of essential oil into the empty spray bottle and top it up with water from the tap. You can add more oil depending on how strong you want the scent. You can blend oils or use only one scent at a time. I like lavender and  cinnamon but have also used and blends of evergreen oils.

It's nice to know exactly what you are spraying and breathing.  I also enjoy tailoring the scent to the season. Happy spritzing. Begonia

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I stocked up on shampoo this past week at out local variety store. Eighteen fluid ounces cost me a dollar. I have a child with hair almost to her waist that she washes daily. We go through a lot of shampoo!  I employ the "pantry method" of buying. When I find a good deal, I buy enough to last until the next sale or the next YEAR!

We use shampoo for more than hair. . . we also use it to wash our hands. On our little farm in town, we pay for our water twice, coming into the house as well as leaving it.  Water and sewer rates are rising like every other household product and service. One way we found of saving in both areas was to start using foam soap.

Foam soap saves on water because it is wet already, being mostly water and just a little soap. You don't have to run the water to get you hands wet. You only have to run the water to rinse.

The refills are expensive for the same reasons: mostly water and just a little soap. I've gotten around this by reusing the empty dispenser. I squirt a couple of tablespoons of shampoo into the dispenser container and fill the rest of it with water. I usually buy a store brand to get the first batch of soap solution and dispenser as inexpensively as possible. (Watch for sales of a dollar or less on foam hand soap.)

The beauty of shampoo is that it is economical and comes in so many wonderful scents. Shower and bath jells and even dish soaps also work. All these products are concentrated, so a little goes a long way--one bottle can last for months!

I hope this saves a few of you a few bucks. Every little bit helps these days.  Begonia.

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My girls have begun to lay again! We have begun eating our own eggs once more. The days are lengthening and at least two of my five hens are now laying. These eggs along with seed catalogs are giving me new hope. It had been feeling like the "2 o'clock in the morning" of the year with gray skies and single-digit and below temperatures (Fahrenheit).

I let my hens have a rest from laying for a couple months. I have an easier conscience about this because I value their manure for compost almost as much as I value their eggs for eating! Supermarket eggs are a real disappointment after eating homegrown eggs, but I wasn't prepared to pay the price for true free-range or organic eggs (call me. . . frugal)!

I decided to barter the last of the parsley that bordered my front yard walk for cull eggs from an organic egg producer that I know. She was so busy with her egg business, home schooling, and work off the farm that she had no time to dry her own parsley. I had a bumper crop that I had been giving away to neighbors because I couldn't stand to see it go to waste and already had a winter's supply dried for my own household. Next year, I might offer to go out to her farm and pick her parsley and dry it in return for eggs while my girls rest!

Today, I bundled up and brought a half dozen eggs over to the 85-year-old neighbor who allows us to garden on her deep second and third lots in return for mowing her yard, help in her garden, and eggs. I also give her some of whatever I produce in my garden plots. These plots receive more sun than my backyard, so I can grow onions, okra, beans, peas, celery, egg plant, and other sun lovers. It is a good trade because she also shares extra plants and seeds from her flower garden and fruit from her vines and pear trees.

The harder times become, the more important barter will be for all of us. Have you done any bartering lately? Everyone has some skill, commodity, or knowledge that someone else lacks but needs. It may be as simple as parsley or as complex as computer teching. Best of all, barter helps us connect with each other in healthy ways and help each other through the hard places.

Stay warm and be thinking about what you need and what you have to offer! Begonia

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Yesterday morning, after putting a 25-pound turkey in the Nesco for a home school potluck that evening, a friend of mine came over to put together midwife kits for Global Health Ministries. (You can learn more at http://www.ghm.org.) We are both workers and like projects that result in nice satisfying piles of completed items. We had a lot of fun putting these kits together.

Most of these midwife kits will go to Africa. Lots of people feel overwhelmed or helpless about what is going on in Africa. You don't have to be a rich rock star to help alleviate some suffering. Each kit contains everything necessary to birth a baby, cut and tie the cord, clean up baby and mother, and dress and wrap the baby. (These kits consist of a 36-inch square of sheet, a regular-size bath towel, a thin wash cloth, one bar of Ivory soap, a pair of medium-sized vinyl exam gloves, a receiving blanket, a newborn t-shirt, a small newborn hat, and two 8-inch pieces of white cotton sting and a new one-sided razor blade in a zip-lock bag--all this is folded into the towel and stowed in a two-gallon zip lock bag and labeled "Midwife Kit".)

We put 32 kits together from the materials I had gathered over a summer and fall of garage and estate sale shopping. Everything I buy had to be in good shape: no stains, rips, or excessive wear. I generally pay 50 cents for a towel or receiving blanket, 10 cents or less for a wash cloth, 10 to 25 cents for a t-shirt, and a dollar or less for a sheet. We buy zip lock bags at dollar stores for a dollar a box and the rest of the items where ever the price is best. Both my friend and I crochet so most of the little hats are made from sport yarn left over from other projects or skeins I pick up at garage sales. Sometimes I tell people what I am doing and they give me stuff for free. I was given all the towels for my first batch of kits by our town recreation department--all came from the lost and found box of the local pool! Cut down and hemmed, a beach towel roughly makes two regular-size towels.

My daughter-in-law will drop off the kits at the organization's headquarters in the Twin Cities. I'm grateful that she will do this, because the postage to ship these kits would be beyond my means.

By the time we had finished with the kits, the turkey was beginning to smell pretty good! The nice thing about turkey is that it goes on sale for outrageously low prices at this time of year. I usually pay about 39 cents a pound. I put about four turkeys in the freezer every year and pull one out whenever cash flow is bad. (A 25-pound turkey will feed us for at least a week, if not a couple of weeks if used carefully.) It only takes about 10 minutes to get a turkey emptied of giblets and neck, rinsed, the cavity salted, and the whole thing popped into a cooker or oven. I used broth from the neck, drippings from the pan, and some flour to make the gravy, and the Betty Crocker recipe, dried herbs from my garden, and some day-old bread to make the dressing. I also brought some canned cranberry jelly I got on sale--just because I don't like to eat turkey without it! I figure the whole thing cost my family about $17.00. It would have been less than $10.00 without the three cans of cranberry jelly and the triple-batch of dressing--but why be stingy?

The potluck turned out to be quite a holiday feast, we had punch, chips and dip, salsa and corn chips, turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, homegrown ham, homemade mac and cheese, fruit salad, mixed green and apple salad with raspberry dressing, raman salad, cranberry jelly (!!!!), challah bread, and chocolate covered popcorn for dessert. We did a white elephant exchange and the house was warm and nicely decorated. It was snowing lightly when we drove home.

There were leftovers, so all I have to do is make mash potatoes today. I've had plenty of time to write to you today. Take care and don't let the turkeys get you down, let them fill you up! Begonia

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I had a wonderful afternoon visiting with neighbors and giving and receiving gifts. I find most of my gifts at garage sales and thrift shops. Other presents I make from things that I find at garage sales and thrift shops. When I find something I think a particular friend will enjoy, I set it aside for them.  I have a gift closet where I put all of these things so I can easily keep track of them. I suppose that a lot of you do the same kind of thing.

I was brought up in a big family with very little money. My first job was cleaning a neighbor's house each Saturday morning. I'd get up early and watch as many cartoons as I could, and then I would go across the street (I was in second grade)  to Mrs. Shoppe's house and clean for a couple of hours: vacuum, sweep, wash dishes, make beds, clean the bathroom, and dust. She would pay me 50 cents, give me some hard candy, and send me home. This is not meant to be a sob story--it's just the way it was and I was glad to have the money.

I'd use some of this money in December to buy or make Christmas presents.  My mom taught me to think of the person I was giving the gift to and let the gift fit the person.She was brought up during the Depression when a piece of fruit or a fountain pen was a wonderful gift. If I didn't want to or couldn't afford to give everyone a gift, it was okay. No one in our family took offense, and we were all taught to appreciate any gift given to us. I remember giving my mom a wooden spoon for Christmas one year, and she treated it as if it were gold. She knew that I'd had to work hard to earn the money to buy that simple gift and she knew how much I loved her.

Here are just a few ideas for thoughtful gifts: 

• Family Box: This idea came from my pen pal in Kentucky. Fill a box with things that families can do together and give a family gift rather than a bunch of individual gifts:sledding/skating--mittens, hats, scarves, hot cocoa mix, marshmallows, candy canes, everything needed to dress a snowman; game night--board games, snacks, small prizes; movie night--DVD or VHS family movie(s), popcorn, a liter or more of pop or drink powder, candy; nature outing--trail maps of local county or state parks, water bottles, gorp, some inexpensive guide books or info downloaded from web sites.
• Books! Check out the web sites of libraries in your area. Most of them have books sales annually, and some have them monthly. A good book sale in my area sells children's books for 25 cents, hardcovers for a dollar, and soft cover books for 50 cents. (If you volunteer to sort or carry books for these events, you are usually given an opportunity to have "first picks.") You find books at these sales that are out of print or so unusual that you wouldn't have guessed that they existed--I found a book of bridges with pictures and schematic diagrams that cost me one dollar for the structural engineer in my life. She was thrilled--I was too! There are also the independent and chain book stores that take books in trade and sell them for half the cover price. Sometimes I buy books when I find them in good condition for 10 cents each at garage sales and then trade them in at these stores for cash, more books, or gift certificates.
• Custom Cookbooks: I made one of these for a friend today. This friend was a bit downhearted because they found that her husband  was allergic to dairy and nuts this year, and all her favorite family Christmas cookie recipes contained butter and nuts! I bought a can of butter flavored shortening then got on the computer and searched using dogpile.com for  recipes containing butter flavored shortening. I filled a binder with free recipes and used a piece of Christmas stationary to make a cover. It is all wrapped and under the tree right now.
• Food Kits:There are lots of make-a-mix recipes for soups, muffins, bars, cookies, tea breads, drinks, flavored rice, etc. on the web or that you can get from the public library. I like to give these kinds of gifts to the mail carriers and neighbors. They make good "guy" gifts. I have quite a library of these types of books and pamphlets that I have picked up at book sales and garage sales. I "mine" them regularly for gift ideas.
• Things you make or grow: I have been given gifts of seeds, garlands of pine cones for my mantle, strings of popcorn for the wild birds, favorite poems in handmade cards. My mother likes to get gifts of herbs from my garden. This year my sister and I with my daughter's help picked apples from a tree that we had given my dad for Father's Day over 20 years ago. I dried a half bushel of them and returned some to my mother as a gift.

I'm sure that you have other great ideas for thoughtful gifts. If you want to share them, feel free to respond to this post.

Merry Christmas, Begonia.

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Seventeen inches of snow fell on my neighborhood last week, complicating all of our lives immensely. Then the temperature dropped below 0 F. We had received one or two inches a few days before so I had already been pulling the big tarp over my hens' straw-bedded yard (previously three raised garden beds) each night to keep it relatively snow free. The Girls don't like the feel of snow on their tender chicken feet. They refuse to leave the coop if I don't sweep the snow off the run between the house and yard and put a little straw down to buffer them from the cold.

My five "girls" retreated into the coop before the worst of the storm hit. To further complicate all of our lives, one of the gals decided to molt almost bald before the storm. I entered the coop one chilly morning to what looked like the aftermath of  a massive pillow fight. Since the girls are essentially working pets and she would go out if her sisters went out, I felt I had to coop them and start using the ceramic heat emitter bulb to raise the temperature enough to keep her alive until her new feathers emerged.

In other respects the gals are surprisingly hardy. I purposely chose Dominiques for the color and tightness of their feathers, ability to forage, and their calm dispositions. I liked the idea of a bird that could stand cold, resist frostbite, blend in, find it's own food, and get along with each other and me. My girls will chose to stay outside in 14 or 15 F with a windbreak and some scratch!

Another complication of raising chickens in town is that they cannot be a nuisance. That means no excessive noise, no smell, no flies, no vermin, and no eye sores.  Needless to say, there are no roosters in my small flock. I had to carefully think through my backyard "system" before I even brought the chicks home to brood.

I already had a big two-bin composting system in place to handle my garden and vegetable household waste, so manure disposal has never been a problem. I layer kitchen scraps that I don't feed the hens and the droppings from under their roost and the floor of the coop each day with rough garden material. The benefit is more finished compost more quickly.

How to prevent flies and smells? My extremely handy husband built a very stout, dry coop. (I traded hostas with my  generous brother-in-law for 80% of the building materials). Dry manure doesn't breed flies. Bedding the yard with seedy grass hay keeps the girls busy, and as they scratch to find bugs and larvae under the dark moist cover, they turn their manure into the soil of the yard and into contact with all the decomposers in the soil, eliminating odor. From time to time, I rake up the broken-down bedding and add it as a rough layer to the compost bin or use it as a feeding mulch on one of my garden beds.

Idle beaks are the devils workshop! Busy birds are generally quiet birds. Unless they see a strange dog or person walking by on the street below, or a bunny in the next yard, or they are working on laying an egg! Noise management complicates our lives the most. Five angry hens can make quite a racket. Distractions in the form of food sometimes works, but I can't help feeling that I am the one being manipulated!

Vermin problems have been minimized so far by raising the coop, burying wire in the ground, and fastening it to the bottom of the structure. Hardware wire between the floor joists and the floor of the coop keeps mice and rats from gnawing their way in easily.

The coop is sided and shingled, and next spring it will be painted to match our house. The yard has lattice I obtained from various sources (my favorite pieces were free or purchased at garage sales) fastened to the wire on three sides. It makes the yard more attractive and breaks up the birds' patterns, making them less attractive to loose and roving dogs--the biggest killers of urban chickens.

My husband just woke up long enough to comment that blogs are supposed to be short, so I'll stop here. Stay Warm, Begonia.

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