Crafty Girl

I upgraded Movable Type this morning. It seems to have fixed the errors leaving comment generated. Comment Away!

We had our first really cold day this winter. And by really cold, I mean below zero. We usually have a couple of weeks of below zero weather, but this winter has been marked by a series of freezes and thaws where the freezes are just barely below 32F.

The experiment…
I did ditch the Revlon Colorstay (thanks Joy) and I am continuing the use of the Jojoba. I switched cleansers to one that doesn’t contain Sodium Laurel/Laureth Sulfate. Things seem to have calmed down and my skin is back to fairly clear.

Chickens
Why are chickens so dumb? I think about 6 of my hens might be too stupid to live (TSTL). We haven’t had much snow this winter, so the back yard has been fairly clear especially over the drain field. The chickens wander around freely during the day, but usually go to the coop at dusk. Well, we got a couple of feet of snow in the last week and for the last three days 2 chickens get out to the middle of this stretch of snow and just sit and 4 others make it to the heat vent for our furnace. They are just sitting outside well after dark so Bill and I have been carrying them back to the coop. No fun! We’ve had some warm days and no more snow so the depth has decreased from 2 down to 1 foot of snow, but it’s still no fun tromping out there and collecting the chickens.

And the cardigan…
It’s all sewn up. I just have to knit the collar and sew on a zipper. I should note that last time I attempted adding a zipper it went less than well. In fact, I still need to fix the last zipper I did. Hopefully this one goes better. I did extend the seed stitched zipper band area from 2 to 6 rows on each side because the sweater was a wee bit tight when I tried it on. Seems to be a perfect fit now.

This has been an exceedingly mild winter by my standards. Most days have been in the low 30s, we’ve had at least 3 major thaws and very little snow fall so far. It’s colder and snowier this week than it has been thus far and it’s not like we can say winter is over as we tend to get snow into May. Anyway, the weather has been very weird for northern Michigan.

I do, in fact, still knit. Just very slowly. I’m almost done with my Ribby Cardi. All the pieces are done and I’ve got it blocking right now. Just have to sew it together, make the collar, add the button bands and attach a zipper. Hmm, sounds like a lot.

We met another family in the area that feels the same as we do about farming and raising animals. We were looking for someone to butcher our meat chickens this summer and found the Bakers in Marion. They are way more sustainable than us. They have a great farm and raise lots of hogs (by lots, they might have 30 or 40 right about now), chickens, beef, etc. They have milk goats! The husband recently quit his off farm job and is doing custom butchering. What does it say about me that I am a little envious of their life? We’ve been out there a couple of times and always end up talking for hours.

We survived the holidays without serious mishap. The stomach flu has been going around and we’ve managed to escape that as well. We both felt like we were getting upset stomachs and broke out the raw ginger. That stuff rocks! No it doesn’t taste that good but it works for me. Maybe it’s all in my head.

With our recylcling and composting efforts we’ve reduced our weekly trash to one or two kitchen sized garbage bags. Not bad. I found the recycling center and was sad to discover that as far as plastic goes, they only accept #1 & #2 plastics. I’m also disappointed in the hair gel I use. They don’t label the bottle as to what type of plastic it is.

They hens are now laying at full capacity. We’re getting about 16 eggs a day. We need to find a profitable outlet! So far the excess eggs are going to friends and family, but it costs us about $9/week to feed them. But it is so worth it. They taste great!

The stove arrived by semi, which in and of itself was an ordeal. We got about a foot of snow that day and the driver was afraid to come down our road. So we had him drop it off in town and went to pick it up Saturday.

It was defective. Not only was it defective, it wasn’t made in this country as the manufacture led us to believe. With the vast quantities of snow and plummeting tempuratures, we’ve decided to wait until spring. Probably a good thing all around.

Bill and I purchased a wood stove. It should be delivered today. We ended up purchasing it mail order because every reasonably priced stove in our area was sold out. At current propane prices the wood stove should save us about $1000/year in fuel costs. We’re lucky in that

I’m really becoming concerned with oil prices and the continuing availability of oil and have been actively trying reduce our use of electricity and propane. Last year we replaced most of our light bulbs with fluorescent ones. I made sure all the heat vents to the basement were closed. Turned down the water heater (did we really need the water so hot it could cause serious burns? No.). We’re making a concerted effort to just turn off lights when we are not in a room. I’m wearing pants twice before washing (unless really dirty). Some of this stuff is a real duh for other people, but hey, we all gotta start somewhere. I think, to some extent, we were so poor when I was growing up I associated some of these behaviors with being poor, so I just need to make a mental shift.

I’ve been planting a few veggies every summer for the last few years, but this coming summer we’ve both agreed to plant a real vegetable garden…enough to substantially impact our buying habits at the grocery store. We already raise most of the meat we eat and have LOTS of poop for soil improvement (Northern Michigan is one big sand pit!). I’ve also started a compost bin. The animals get most of our food scraps, but there’s plenty we don’t give them…coffee grounds, banana and citrus peels, anything that would make the animal in question a cannibal.

The biggest change I need to make is to start to recycle. We started raising our own livestock to have healthy food choices. The massive antibiotics and hormones fed to factory farmed animals as well as their treatment just made me nuts. By doing that we were being good to ourselves. But I heard a great line the other day (can’t remember where)…”By eating organic, we’re being good to ourselves. By purchasing Fair Trade items, we’re being good to ourselves AND our planet”. That clicked with me as far as recycling was concerned. Already, we reuse a lot of stuff, but out here in the country we don’t have any curbside recycling programs. And I just need to make the effort to find out where my local recycling center is and use it.

And lastly…if you haven’t heard of podcast they are awesome. A podcast is like an independent radio show. Usually they make an MP3 available for download, so an iPod is not required. I’ve been listing to More Hip Than Hippie and loving it. These women are funny, they love beer and chocolate AND they have great ideas for making less of an impact on the earth. All presented in a supper entertaining show.

We’re having a beautiful fall in Northern Michigan. The weather has been cooperating perfectly to produce awesome foliage. There’s something about the light in the fall that just illuminates everything. Maybe the lower humidity? I can’t say, except I know it gorgeous.

I made a quick American style mozzarella cheese yesterday. Wow! It even tastes like cheese. It could use a little more salt, but otherwise, I think it’s great.

I even had a minor catastrophe while making it. I have (had) one of those fancy digital thermometers that have the probe at the end of a long wire. It gave up the ghost in the middle of my heating the milk to 90 degrees. After it sat at 82 degrees for like 15 minutes I realized something must be wrong. Got out another thermometer that starts it’s markings at 100 degrees. 105. Damn. But it was forming curds and whey so I continued on and low and behold! I’ve got cheese.

The thermometer dying might have had something to do with the fact that is was MELTED because my husband used it to monitor tempuratures while heat treating metal in a toaster oven. I found the thermometer on top of the oven in the basement. I assume that he left it on top of the toaster while cooking his metal things (custom knives) … (yes, we’re both crafty). He’s out of town this weekend so I couldn’t ask about it. Or make him fix it.

Today I tried making Monterey Jack. One mis-step this time and it was trashed. You have to add calcium chloride to store bought milk in order for the rennet to work well and it must be added before the rennet. Oops. After a long time of it not solidifying I gave up and fed it to the hens. The hens you ask? We got 25 laying hens this summer. Yeah, that’s a lot.

Or “That’s some Redneck shit, Yo!”

OK, it was the 2nd, not the 4th. But holidays start early don’t they?

We ran into some old friends at the grocery store and got invited to a Mud Bog yesterday. At first I was like “Why do I want to go out to a dirty old mud bog?” But B convinced me and I remembered that I usually enjoy myself at events like this. At the very least, it’s kinda fun to see people break their shit.

The dirt at this place was amazing. It was like potting soil. B called it a peat bog. When the trucks ran across the ground would literally ripple.

I wish we had a better camera, but all we had was Bill’s camera phone.

You know you have to have Heavy Equipment

4 Truck stuck all in a row. And if you look closely, there’s a 5th stuck behind all of them

B & I went camping this weekend with 2 of my co-workers and their families. We had great fun! We camped at a very nice state campground and broke most of their rules…We were loud after 10 PM. We used the pump station for something other than filling up water containers (rinsing the coffee pot). We washed small children in the “Camp Sink” (dishes only). We had too many people staying on one site. We picked green vegetation and many other things. We are bad campers.

We were about a mile from Lake Michigan and hiked through some sand dunes to get to the beach. Fun! We also talked inappropriately around children. We were making fun of the Sales Manager at work and how he left a DVD with about 8 hours of Japanese Gang Bang porn in it when he gave it to our department for some new software to be loaded on it. My coworkers oldest son was still up and he mis-heard what his father said (It was 8 hours of Japanese Gang Banging) and busted out with “I want some Japanese Cake”. We laughed and laughed about it. Loud enough for the neighbors to ask us to quiet down. Japanese Cake was the joke for the weekend.

After an eight month hiatus, I feel the need to blog again. Part of what drove me away was the massive comment spam. Despite the fact that I installed a comment blacklister and attempted to close all old entries to comments, I was spending a ridiculous amount of time cleaning up every day.

Hopefully this new version of MT and some other changes will help.