The girls.

Well, this is a weird post. 4 weeks ago we got 4 baby chicks. Two red and two black adorable baby chicks. Brad had been planning and preparing for weeks. He checked out nearly every book on chickens at our library and then designed and built both a brooder and a coop. He researched breeds and styles and then placed an order for the two types that were good egg layers and friendly with kids. The boys were ecstatic and Ben couldn't stop talking about when his chicks were to arrive and what he would name them. Some of the names on the short list included Stinky, Poopy, Papa, Gaga, Mama, Chick, and Karen.

Brad brought them home on a Friday afternoon after work and they were just one day old. They were SO tiny. So fluffy and sweet and I instantly loved the idea of having chickens SO much more than I had before. They stayed in their brooder (a modified tuperware) under the heat lamp in our dining room and we spent lots of time holding them, singing to them and just staring at them. Ben finally decided on 3 names. One red one was Lightening McQueen, one black one was Sally, and the other black one was Mack. How appropriate. All three characters from the Cars movie. He couldn't make his mind up for the other red one and well it was probably a good thing, because she didn't even make it through the first night.

Saturday morning, Ben ran into our bedroom and said, "Mama. One of the chicks died." Brad and I went from not believing him, to wondering how in the heck he knew what "died" meant, to freaking out about having to have the "death" talk with him. He's 3 years old! I have to explain the afterlife to him because of some 1 day old chicken!? Crap!

Sure enough, ol' red was foaming at the mouth and rigid in the food dish. Gross. I say down and asked Ben how it made him feel that the chick died. He smiled, hugged my neck and said, "It's ok Mama. We just bury it." Whew. Catastrophe averted.

Down to three (the ones that were named!) we watched in amazement as they grew, literally right before our eyes. We would check on them after an hour and they would have new tail feathers, or their wings would have DOUBLED in size. It was awesome. After about a week, we started taking them on field trips out to the backyard and loved watching them explore the yard and learn and do innate things that no mother hen had taught them to do. The boys were so gentle with them and knew that while they could pet them they were still to little to pick up. Ben would stop every 1-2 minutes and say, "Where are the chicks? Are the chicks ok?" or constantly give reports on what they were doing. Des would chase them around, carefully reach out to touch them and then shriek when he felt their feathers, or laugh when they walked behind him.

They grew so fast and quickly turned into the awkward teenage looking chicks. The weather turned warm and we started taking them outside even more frequently. Over Spring Break, Brad put the finishing touches on the bad-ass chicken coop he built from scratch. Because they seemed to be so big we started leaving them in their for longer stretches during the day to enjoy the sunshine, grass, bugs and space, and then returning them to their brooder (dining room tupperware) for sleeping.

Saturday night I got home from yoga training to a quiet house. Brad looked up at me from the couch with a very solemn face and said, "I've got some bad news." My heart dropped. As with anyone, those words summon my deepest darkest fears. "Lightening McQueen is gone."

I fell to the floor. Mainly from relief.

However, I was confused. How? He had no idea. The boys went out right before bedtime to bring the chicks in and she wasn't in the coop. Ben fell apart, crying, so upset. She had been his favorite. (She was the prettiest and spunkiest of the three and he had almost caught her the day before so they had a connection). Brad could not figure out if she'd gotten out or a predator had gotten in? We were baffled. And sad. (but again...relieved.)

So down to two little black hens, Sally and Mack (or pretty face as I called her) we were a little bummed. First, our egg production was going to be much less, and we would probably have to supplement fairly regularly with farmer's market purchases. And secondly, we really liked having a mix of breeds. But, oh well. Then Sunday night I get back from yoga training and, you guessed it. Another one was gone. Mack had bit the dust, but this time she left some feathers on the chicken wire as a clue. They were escaping from the coop!

Their skinny little prepubescent chicken bones were actually small enough to fit through the chicken wire! That fluffy mature plummage was disguising the fact that they were still way too small to be left in the coop without supervision. Who knew? Certainly not us. And to ensure his suspicion, Brad saw Sally do it too but was able to capture her before she got out of the yard and murdered by the lurking neighborhood feral cats. ugh.

So. We still have Sally girl. She has spent the last week all alone, squeaking endlessly for attention and love. We have held her and coddled her and loved on her to ease her loneliness. Whenever we are outside, we bring her with us and she follows us around just like we hoped. She sits on my lap and sometimes even my shoulder. She curls up against my leg to take a nap. She plays chase with the boys. She wants to be right next to one of us at all times. Would I have ever imagined my backyard playtime to include a chicken ON ME? No way, but it has been SO awesome. She is hilarious.

Ben handled the second chick going missing much better, though he did request that we go for a neighborhood walk to look for her, just in case "she couldn't find our house." So we did. And now he is even more protective of Sally keeping her in sight almost constantly. But Des is her favorite. Probably because she can make him laugh so easily.

We plan on getting miss sally some sisters soon and this time, we'll try to ignore the smell and keep them inside for a little bit longer.

Adventures in Pear Sauce Making...

So, how have I not posted this yet? Looking back through 2009's drafts I found this.

Did I ever even tell you about the Pear Sauce? Probably not.

Well, last summer when I was in the midst of harvesting everything I could get my hands on, including a 10 1/2 pound baby, I decided to make life even more interesting. You see, my parents have pear trees on their farm. Planted by my great-grandmother, they produce huge, delicious fruit every summer and we've never done a single thing with them. With the exception of an occasional snack, they've never been picked, canned, dried, nothin'. Until now!

That's right, at 9 months pregnant I decided that these pears needed to fulfill their destiny. Ben and I gathered about 10 reusuable totes full and the experiment began. My gram thankfully came to help with the hours of peeling, then there was the cooking, the mashing, the food processing (thank goodness for Grandma Hepburn's Kitchen-Aid!), the blending, the storing, the freezing. And by golly, it's good! Even better than apple sauce if you ask me.

The first round went so well that I started feeling sorry for all the pears left to rot on the tree...so we went back and got even more!

Needless to say, for about 2 weeks there was a mess of ginormous proportion in the kitchen that resulted in TONS of a delicious and healthy snack. The pears have a PURPOSE!

This stuff is so healthy (NO sugar or anything) that it can be used as baby food and I've begun handing it out to all my baby friends. Plus, talk about a great fruit source for Ben!

In the end, there were enough pears for another round, but the whole baby arrival got in the way. It was an awesome experiment though and I look forward to doing it again this year. I loved getting to peel out in the sunshine on the back porch, or sharing the chore with my gram. I loved climbing up in the trees with a huge paint scraper handle to whack down the higher fruit and loved filling my freezer full of homegrown, organic goodness. But not all was so cheery...Some of the things that I didn't expect included:

Having a huge 4" fuzzy caterpiller crawl out of a pear I was peeling or there was that huge 3" spider crawling around in the bag of pears. Oh. My. If you know me, you know my fear of these type of creatures. If there would have been a camera on me, I would have been a #1 hit on youtube.

My hands covered in too many cuts to count from getting a little too quick with the peeler.

The very sore back from carrying 30+ pound bags of pears...(or maybe that was from carrying the 10+ pound baby in my belly?)

And there were the scalding burns from the bubbling pears that I forced through the food grinder with a wooden spoon. Ouch!

All in all, I would say it was well worth the effort...seeing how Ben and I just finished off another jar for lunch. Yummy.

December 7th: christmas cards edition!

Family Advent Activity: Mail Out Christmas Cards!

Brad and I have cycled through all types of holiday message ware. As newlyweds we launched into the christmas letter trend. Once Ben arrived we switched over to the photo cards and last year we avoided the postal arena all together. This year we tried something new. Recycled christmas cards.

I've always been a saver. I find sentiment in just about everything and therefore think that it needs to be saved. I've got drawings from classmates in grade school, notes from junior high, every picture ever taken in high school, hundreds of letters and cards. Be certain that if you have ever sent me anything in the mail, I've got it.

My son is following in my footsteps...bless his heart. His wife will hate it. I know Brad does. It leads to boxes of "valuables" that are probably nothing more than an fire hazard. He treasured each of his birthday cards so much that I hole punched them and tied them together to keep them all in one place and he pulls them out every day to re-read them. It's endearing to say the least.

So, my point is...we've got alot of christmas cards around here. Cards collected over years and years and kept to be treasured. I love the beauty of holiday cards. There is just something about the photos of snow-swept houses, glittery snowflakes, peaceful nativity scenes, and funky trees that make me happy. They are one of my favorite parts of the holiday. I display them...I dream of a wall just covered in framed holiday cards. They are just that pretty.

And this year, we decided enough of that! Let's give these gorgeous cards new life! Let's share the beauty! Let's RE-glorify them. So, we did.

We made cards out of the cards you have sent us.

Ingenious? Not really. But it was fun. And free. And green. And made me happy getting to do something with all of those beautiful keepsakes. So, if you re-receive a card that you have sent us, sorry. But know that I loved it enough to send it out myself!

Freezer Jam

Ok folks....here is by all means the world's easiest recipe! Thanks to my very inspiring sister-in-law and my step-mother-in-law's motivation, I decided to try freezer jam. The original plan was to can like a bonified homesteader, I figured I would try this for my very first try at this stuff. Besides, it's supposed to be delicious. I can vouch that it is simple!

So, here's the steps.

First: Gather your supplies...1. Fruit 2. Freezer Jars 3. Freezer Jam Pectin

Second: Mash 4 cups of the fruit.

Third: Add the Pectin...stir for 3 minutes...make sure it gets all over your pregnant belly.

Fourth: Pour into jars up to marked line. Stack your bounty into a cool pyramid...wait 30 minutes and then put in freezer. 

That's it! I'm serious! It took all of 20 minutes to make 10 jars of jam and it is delicious! No cooking, nothing. It definitely feels like cheating.

*On a sad side note. We planned on getting the blackberries at a U-Pick farm...typically a fairly abundant crop in Oklahoma. This year has been absolutely horrible for fruit here. We had a horrible freeze that killed ALL the peaches...the early heat left a crappy strawberry crop, and then the extensive 105+ weather shriveled all the blackberries. None of the U-Picks ever opened but I found one place 30 minutes away that had a few...So sad.

Stockpile...

So back to those veggies I was talking about. 

I have no pictures, I apologize. You can just skim over this if I can't hold your interest without visuals!

As part of my new and improved "simple living" my goal is to try to mostly eat locally and organically. We were on quite the roll there for several months. We enjoyed made from scratch meals nightly and were really figuring out the ropes of this lifestyle...and then summer hit. We were rarely home, kept missing the farmer's market, my pregnancy got more "in the way" and well, we began sweltering in the 105 heat, and honestly who thinks about food when it's that hot. Much less, preparing and cooking it. Not me, I tell ya.

People tend to think eating mostly organic is MORE expensive...but I am finding ways that it can actually be much, much cheaper. I don't want to bore you with too much detail, and by all means I am no expert on the subject...so I'll spare you. But...

Basically, my method is this. I plan my meals, I only buy what we need (read: what we will eat that week), and I try to cook most stuff from scratch. I stick to simple meals and try to make them healthy. Buying what is available and in season keeps the cost down.

Now, while that sounds all high and mighty, let me clarify a few things. 

For example, we still have dessert almost every night. But instead of store bought, we make something simple from scratch...our favorite being simple old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies... 

Another thing...my husband has eaten the same thing for lunch for the last 7 years. (sandwich, Doritos, apple, granola bar, and Coke) There is no way I can change his ways, it's not worth the effort and by all means, keep the hubbie happy. Instead, I try to bake the bread, switch up the chips a little, and buy the apples organic. I could technically make the granola bar (and still want to try this) and we do have endless supplies of organic beef that I could thinly slice to give him roast beef instead of deli turkey (and maybe we'll try this too). But for now, it's a start. The Coke? Not even gonna try.

Also, I only do this kind of eating when at home in my own kitchen. I don't stress about when we are away, and I would never expect anything like this when a guest in someone else's home.

And finally...we all know about the goldfish...and I can assure you this is NOT the only non-organic, processed treat that my child eats.

So anyway. It's a lofty goal, but one that I feel is very important. So I try. 

As I was saying, the harvest is starting to come in...and that means it's time to stockpile all these delicious, locally grown foods. First of all, by getting them now when they are in season they taste better. They travel less distance to get here. They are SO MUCH CHEAPER. I am doing my self a service because I will have to shop for less later and therefore spend less time at the grocery store with TWO children under the age of 2! AAAH! That is reason enough for me. Plus I am supporting my local farmer's and as I meet them, I like them, and I want them to keep growing me delicious vegetables. 

You might be wondering about our garden...It's doing great. Our cherry tomatoes are coming in, the eggplants have blooms, we gorged ourselves on weeks worth of the best tasting lettuce ever, we've harvested at least 50 onions and there will be more going in...however, we just can't plant enough to stockpile. We have and will most certainly enjoy every delicious fruit of our labor, but we will also add to this from others.

So, I'm in the beginning stages...but here's the plan. I figure if I type it up here...you guys just might hold me accountable to it. I want to:

FREEZE:

squash, okra, tomatoes, eggplant, blackberries, and black-eyed peas

MAKE:

blackberry freezer jam, sun-dried tomatoes, apple sauce & apple butter

CAN:

pears, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and pickled okra

STORE:

Lots of carrots and potatoes in bins in the garage

Lots of onions and garlic hanging in the garage

*Most of these are local items that grow super here in the okie heat and are therefore super abundant and cheap.*

So far I have:

5 bags of battered okra for frying

10 bags of sliced squash for sauteing and 10 bags battered for frying

4 bags of frozen cherries

50 onions hanging

Still a ways to go...but most of the stuff isn't "in" yet and at least it's a start! :)

I'd love to hear any suggestions or plans that you might have for preserving the summer's bounty!!!

The Wind Comes Sweepin' Down the Plain...

And we are takin' advantage of it!

Our local power company, OG&E, has started offering their customers a very cool opportunity. You can sign up for wind power to power your home!

You can either sign up for a percentage of your power or all of it, and Brad and I are so excited. We switched over completely to 100% wind power for all of our electricity! How cool is that! 

Not only is this a renewable resource, but it is also a "local business" as Oklahoma is slowly but surely growing it's wind power initiative taking advantage of one of our most consistent and plentiful resources. Over the last few years, they have expanded greatly and windmills are beginning to dot our western plains.

Yeah for no more coal!