Chicken housing

So, I was looking at the Lowes website for fencing for our backyard which currently bordered by essentially a poor man's chain link fence and I found this awesome thing for $218:


It's a dog run that measures 7'6" x 13' by 6' which I feel is perfect enclosure for the chicken pen. Because of the cat killer dog next door, and our crappy fencing, we really can't have free roaming chickens, so we need to do some kind of pen around the coop to protect them. The chicken coop measures 5'2" by 4'1" by 5' so there is almost a foot of clearance from the top of the coop to the pen, plenty of room to put netting over, or even a cover (which I also saw).

I went and staked out the two areas I would like for the chicken coop, and I'm more of a fan of the one not against the house.


Ron wants to build it from scratch with just some stakes and chicken wire, but with the disastrous placement of the compost bin (we placed it in November in what we thought was a great spot until spring came and neighbor's tree covered it in shade for 10 months) I'm very hesitant to have something that we can't just pick up and move if we make another mistake.

In other news, the roofing felt is still not on and I have not gotten the plywood to spruce it up. Current plan is to have chickens by March.

More cheese!

Ok, no pictures in this post because really, how many pictures can one have of mozzerella cheese on a blog?

Today I made "chaos cheese" which means I made cheese with 5 children in the house who were all hungry/thirsty/wet/bored/can we play the wii???????

I have found the secret to success is delegation, make one child stir while you get goldfish for the others, another child stirs while you get apple juice and then when things get hectic tell them they need to "work it out themselves." Also, the kid who did the most stirring gets to pick the leftover curds from the bowl and do what they will with them. I have to admit the 20 month old did spend some time in the playpen because she kept falling off the step stool (which is about 5 inches) and then being incredibly dramatic about it when I took the step stool away.

When the cheese was done, I called our handy-neighbor and shuttled all the over-two kids to his house, leaving me with only the toddler and dog.

Speaking of the dog, I was not able to get his groomer scheduled for today, so he's just going to have to smell like a dog when my dad gets here. I made the executive decision that it's worth far more to me to pay the $35 and have someone else wash the dog, than attempt to do it in the bathroom and end up chasing him around the house while he pees on the carpet trying to escape.

Note to self: used 1 teaspoon of salt for the cheese. Will taste test on assorted neighbors shortly.

Just a reminder....

Baby, it's cold outside!

Yesterday the kids were driving me insane by 9:00am, so I bundled them and threw them outside to play. Brrrr.....I think it was about 30 degrees.

The prize of the morning was water frozen in a wheelbarrow...which we proceeded to smash about 10 minutes later.

In other news, I'm starting to panic about what to plant and how to go about starting the whole thing. Last year went as planned, one apple tree in and the yard was "de-suburbanized." I'm debating whether just to focus on the chickens this year and let our CSA run for another year and try not stress about growing things...or maybe just put in another fruit tree.

I know Ron wants it to be some mapped out thing to maximize productivity, but I'm thinking I would rather it just evolve organically. I feel confident the land will reveal what it wants to grow if I just give it enough time instead trying to force it, but perhaps I'm just being totally unrealistic.

Well...at least it's a finished project...

I attempted to make a Rose Dishcloth from Lil knit of this and that but I'm pretty sure I screwed up on many levels.

1. I clearly did not have the right gauge going on, since it was just huge and curled all over the place.

2. I chose the wrong colors. I chose a pastel rainbow, but it made it hard for the pattern to show.

3. I chose the wrong yarn. Acrylic is the same as cotton, right? Hahahah. Not so much.

Ah well...

My Mom Makes Cheese

Apparently in class, Max is learning _at words, like Cat, Rat, Hat, etc...when the teacher got to "vat," the kids inquired as to what a vat was and the teacher responded with "Oh, it's a big tub where you make stuff like cheese" and Max jumped up and yelled "My MOM MAKES CHEESE!"

Yes, yes she does.

This is what happens when you knit for toddlers

Rain, rain...everywhere

Well, I suppose it's better than being snowed in, but having to scrape an inch of ice off my car = Not So Much Fun.